Related papers: Spekkens' toy model in all dimensions and its rela…
Spekkens' toy theory is a non-contextual hidden variable model with an epistemic restriction, a constraint on what the observer can know about the reality. It has been shown in [3] that for qudits of odd dimensions it is operationally…
In order to better understand a complex theory like quantum mechanics, it is sometimes useful to take a step back and create alternative theories, with more intuitive foundations, and examine which features of quantum mechanics can be…
Spekkens has introduced a toy theory [Phys. Rev. A, 75, 032110 (2007)] in order to argue for an epistemic view of quantum states. I describe a notation for the theory (excluding certain joint measurements) which makes its similarities and…
The toy model used by Spekkens [R. Spekkens, Phys. Rev. A 75, 032110 (2007)] to argue in favor of an epistemic view of quantum mechanics is extended by generalizing his definition of pure states (i.e. states of maximal knowledge) and by…
Quantum mechanics is known to provide significant improvements in information processing tasks when compared to classical models. These advantages range from computational speeds-up to security improvements. A key question is where these…
While quantum theory cannot be described by a local hidden variable model, it is nevertheless possible to construct such models that exhibit features commonly associated with quantum mechanics. These models are also used to explore the…
Information is physical, and for a physical theory to be universal, it should model observers as physical systems, with concrete memories where they store the information acquired through experiments and reasoning. Here we address these…
We map Spekkens' toy model to a quantum mechanics defined over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_5$. This allows us to define arbitrary linear combinations of the epistemic states in the model. For Spekkens' elementary system with only $2^2=4$…
We investigate the strengths and limitations of the Spekkens toy model, which is a local hidden variable model that replicates many important properties of quantum dynamics. First, we present a set of five axioms that fully encapsulate…
We give a complete characterization of the (non)classicality of all stabilizer subtheories. First, we prove that there is a unique nonnegative and diagram-preserving quasiprobability representation of the stabilizer subtheory in all odd…
We present a toy theory that is based on a simple principle: the number of questions about the physical state of a system that are answered must always be equal to the number that are unanswered in a state of maximal knowledge. A wide…
Quantum theory has an epistemic horizon, i.e. exact values cannot be assigned simultaneously to incompatible physical quantities. As shown by Spekkens' toy theory, positing an epistemic horizon akin to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in…
We describe a general framework in which we can precisely compare the structures of quantum-like theories which may initially be formulated in quite different mathematical terms. We then use this framework to compare two theories: quantum…
Spekkens has introduced an epistemically restricted classical theory of discrete systems, based on discrete phase space. The theory manifests a number of quantum-like properties but cannot fully imitate quantum theory because it is…
We define a simple rule that allows to describe sequences of projective measurements for a broad class of generalized probabilistic models. This class embraces quantum mechanics and classical probability theory, but, for example, also the…
In this paper we consider theories in which reality is described by some underlying variables. Each value these variables can take represents an ontic state (a particular state of reality). The preparation of a quantum state corresponds to…
Modelling quantum devices is to find a model according to quantum theory that can explain the result of experiments in a quantum device. We find that usually we cannot correctly identify the model describing the actual physics of the device…
New status in quantum mechanics is connected with recent achievements in the inverse problem. With its help instead of about ten exactly solvable models which serve as a basis of the contemporary education there are infinite (!) number,…
It is a fundamental prediction of quantum theory that states of physical systems are described by complex vectors or density operators on a Hilbert space. However, many experiments admit effective descriptions in terms of other state…
We propose a toy-model theory, that mimics various characteristic features of quantum mechanics. Unlike the toy-models previously studied in the literature, our toy-model allows for an observer to have a full knowledge of a system's real…