Solvable Criterion for the Contextuality of any Prepare-and-Measure Scenario


Abstract in English

Starting from arbitrary sets of quantum states and measurements, referred to as the prepare-and-measure scenario, a generalized Spekkens non-contextual ontological model representation of the quantum statistics associated to the prepare-and-measure scenario is constructed. The generalization involves the new notion of a reduced space which is non-trivial for non-tomographically complete scenarios. A new mathematical criterion, called unit separability, is formulated as the relevant classicality criterion -- the name is inspired by the usual notion of quantum state separability. Using this criterion, we derive a new upper bound on the cardinality of the ontic space. Then, we recast the unit separability criterion as a (possibly infinite) set of linear constraints, from which two separate converging hierarchies of algorithmic tests to witness non-classicality or certify classicality are obtained. We relate the complexity of these algorithmic tests to that of a class of vertex enumeration problems. Finally, we reformulate our results in the framework of generalized probabilistic theories and discuss the implications for simplex-embeddability in such theories.

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