This paper discusses a claim by Clifton and Halvorson (2001) that, contrary to non-relativistic quantum mechanics, local operations can never destroy entanglement in relativistic quantum field theory. The impossibility of achieving local disentanglement would raise a threat for the mutual independence between microscopic subsystems. Here, we observe that Clifton and Halvorson no-go result rests on an unnecessarily strong notion of local operations, which we label absolutely local operations, and we argue that a weaker notion, namely that of relatively local operations, (...) is sufficient to guarantee that acting on one subsystem does not have non-local effects on another spacelike separated subsystem. We then show that one can achieve local disentanglement in relativistic quantum field theory by means of relatively local operations. In fact, we prove that, under the split property, there exists a class of disentangling relatively local operations. (shrink)

Recently, new types of independence of a pair of C *- or W *-subalgebras (1,2) of a C *- or W *-algebra have been introduced: operational C *- and W *-independence (Rédei and Summers, http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.5294, 2008) and operational C *- and W *-separability (Rédei and Valente, How local are local operations in local quantum field theory? 2009). In this paper it is shown that operational C *-independence is equivalent to operational C *-separability and that operational W *-independence is equivalent to (...) operational W *-separability. Specific further sub-types of both operational C *- and W *-separability and operational C *- and W *-independence are defined and the problem of characterization of the logical interdependencies of the independence notions is raised. (shrink)

Relativistic locality is interpreted in this paper as a web of conditions expressing the compatibility of a physical theory with the underlying causal structure of spacetime. Four components of this web are distinguished: spatiotemporal locality, along with three distinct notions of causal locality, dubbed CL-Independence, CL-Dependence, and CL-Dynamic. These four conditions can be regimented using concepts from the categorical approach to quantum field theory initiated by Brunetti, Fredenhagen, and Verch (2003). A covariant functor representing a general quantum field theory is (...) defined to be causally local if it satisfies the three CL conditions. Any such theory is viewed as fully compliant with relativistic locality. We survey current results indicating the extent to which an algebraic quantum field theory satisfying the Haag–Kastler axioms is causally local. (shrink)