2024/11/15 by Maiyuren Srikumar, Srikumar, Maiyuren, Stephen D. Bartlett +4 · 2 voices
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Philosophy and Theoretical Science #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/tlh1-xwks
openalex publication_date 2026/02/02 · openalex created_date 2026/02/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/02/27
Contextuality is a key characteristic that separates quantum from classical phenomena and an important tool in understanding the potential advantage of quantum computation. However, when assessing the quantum resources available for quantum information processing, there is no formalism to determine whether a set of states can exhibit contextuality and whether such proofs of contextuality indicate anything about the resourcefulness of that set. Introducing a well-motivated notion of what it means for a set of states to be contextual, we establish a relationship between contextuality and antidistinguishability of sets of states. We go beyond the traditional notions of contextuality and antidistinguishability and treat both properties as resources, demonstrating that the degree of contextuality within a set of states has a direct connection to its level of antidistinguishability. If a set of states is contextual, then it must be weakly antidistinguishable and vice versa. However, critical contextuality emerges as a stronger property than traditional antidistinguishability.