English

Noncontextuality inequalities for prepare-transform-measure scenarios

Quantum Physics 2024-07-16 v1

Abstract

We provide the first systematic technique for deriving witnesses of contextuality in prepare-transform-measure scenarios. More specifically, we show how linear quantifier elimination can be used to compute a polytope of correlations consistent with generalized noncontextuality in such scenarios. This polytope is specified as a set of noncontextuality inequalities that are necessary and sufficient conditions for observed data in the scenario to admit of a classical explanation relative to any linear operational identities, if one ignores some constraints from diagram preservation. While including these latter constraints generally leads to tighter inequalities, it seems that nonlinear quantifier elimination would be required to systematically include them. We also provide a linear program which can certify the nonclassicality of a set of numerical data arising in a prepare-transform-measure experiment. We apply our results to get a robust noncontextuality inequality for transformations that can be violated within the stabilizer subtheory. Finally, we give a simple algorithm for computing all the linear operational identities holding among a given set of states, of transformations, or of measurements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.09624,
  title  = {Noncontextuality inequalities for prepare-transform-measure scenarios},
  author = {David Schmid and Roberto D. Baldijão and John H. Selby and Ana Belén Sainz and Robert W. Spekkens},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.09624},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

15 pages + appendices; 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:39:17.038Z