English

Contextuality Can be Verified with Noncontextual Experiments

Quantum Physics 2024-12-03 v1

Abstract

We uncover new features of generalized contextuality by connecting it to the Kirkwood-Dirac (KD) quasiprobability distribution. Quantum states can be represented by KD distributions, which take values in the complex unit disc. Only for ``KD-positive'' states are the KD distributions joint probability distributions. A KD distribution can be measured by a series of weak and projective measurements. We design such an experiment and show that it is contextual iff the underlying state is not KD-positive. We analyze this connection with respect to mixed KD-positive states that cannot be decomposed as convex combinations of pure KD-positive states. Our result is the construction of a noncontextual experiment that enables an experimenter to verify contextuality.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2412.00199,
  title  = {Contextuality Can be Verified with Noncontextual Experiments},
  author = {Jonathan J. Thio and Wilfred Salmon and Crispin H. W. Barnes and Stephan De Bièvre and David R. M. Arvidsson-Shukur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.00199},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

17 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T20:17:34.978Z