Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence as One-Shot Hypothesis Testing

Abstract

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.