Simplicial methods in the resource theory of contextuality
Abstract
We develop a resource theory of contextuality within the framework of symmetric monoidal categories, extending recent simplicial approaches to quantum contextuality. Building on the theory of simplicial distributions, which integrates homotopy-theoretic structures with probability, we introduce event scenarios as a functorial generalization of presheaf-theoretic measurement scenarios and prove their equivalence to bundle scenarios via the Grothendieck construction. We define symmetric monoidal structures on these categories and extend the distribution functor to a stochastic setting, yielding a resource theory that generalizes the presheaf-theoretic notion of simulations. Our main result characterizes convex maps between simplicial distributions in terms of non-contextual distributions on a corresponding mapping scenario, enhancing and extending prior results in categorical quantum foundations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.24010,
title = {Simplicial methods in the resource theory of contextuality},
author = {Aziz Kharoof and Cihan Okay},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.24010},
year = {2025}
}
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44 pages