TY - GEN
T1 - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence as One-Shot Hypothesis Testing
AU - George, Ian
AU - Chen, Xinan
AU - Varshney, Lav R.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IEEE.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Both the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) struggle with a strong indeterminacy in what data to look for and when to do so. This has led to attempts at finding both fundamental mathematical limits for SETI as well as benchmarks regarding specific signals. Due to the natural correspondence, previous information-theoretic work has been formulated in terms of communication between extraterrestrial and human civilizations. In this work, we instead formalize SETI as a detection problem, specifically (quantum) one-shot asymmetric hypothesis testing. This framework holds for all detection scenarios-in particular, it is relevant for detection of any technosignature, including quantum mechanical signals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to consider the applicability of SETI for quantum signals. Using this formalism, we are able to unify the analysis of fundamental limits and benchmarking specific signals. To show a distinction between METI and SETI, we show that significantly weaker signals may be useful in detection in comparison to communication. Furthermore, the framework is computationally efficient, so it can be implemented by practicing astrobiologists.
AB - Both the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and messaging extraterrestrial intelligence (METI) struggle with a strong indeterminacy in what data to look for and when to do so. This has led to attempts at finding both fundamental mathematical limits for SETI as well as benchmarks regarding specific signals. Due to the natural correspondence, previous information-theoretic work has been formulated in terms of communication between extraterrestrial and human civilizations. In this work, we instead formalize SETI as a detection problem, specifically (quantum) one-shot asymmetric hypothesis testing. This framework holds for all detection scenarios-in particular, it is relevant for detection of any technosignature, including quantum mechanical signals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to consider the applicability of SETI for quantum signals. Using this formalism, we are able to unify the analysis of fundamental limits and benchmarking specific signals. To show a distinction between METI and SETI, we show that significantly weaker signals may be useful in detection in comparison to communication. Furthermore, the framework is computationally efficient, so it can be implemented by practicing astrobiologists.
KW - Asymmetric Hypothesis Testing
KW - One-Shot Information Theory
KW - Quantum Information Theory
KW - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85154038311&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85154038311&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/CISS56502.2023.10089645
DO - 10.1109/CISS56502.2023.10089645
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85154038311
T3 - 2023 57th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, CISS 2023
BT - 2023 57th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, CISS 2023
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 57th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems, CISS 2023
Y2 - 22 March 2023 through 24 March 2023
ER -