Tomographic locality is a principle commonly used in the program of finding axioms that pick out quantum theory within the landscape of possible theories. The principle asserts the sufficiency of local measurements for achieving a tomographic characterization of any bipartite state. In this work, we explore the meaning of the principle of tomographic locality by developing a simple scheme for generating a wide variety of theories that violate the principle. In this scheme, one starts with a tomographically local theory—which can be classical, quantum, or postquantum—and a physical symmetry, and one restricts the processes in the theory to all and only those that are covariant with respect to the collective action of that symmetry. We refer to the resulting theories as twirled worlds. We show that failures of tomographic locality are ubiquitous in twirled worlds. From the possibility of such failures in classical twirled worlds, we argue that the failure of tomographic locality (i.e., tomographic nonlocality) does not imply ontological holism. Our results also demonstrate the need for researchers seeking to axiomatize quantum theory to take a stand on the question of whether there are superselection rules that have a fundamental status.

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• Quantum formalism
• Quantum foundations
• Quantum information theory