Contextuality, Witness of Quantum Weirdness

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of contextuality in quantum mechanics, its theoretical developments, and its role as a witness of quantum weirdness, highlighting recent generalizations and their implications for understanding quantum paradoxes.

Contribution

It reviews recent advances in the theory of contextuality, including generalizations and their connection to quantum non-locality and paradoxes, emphasizing their significance in quantum foundations.

Findings

Contextuality is a fundamental aspect of quantum weirdness.

Recent theoretical generalizations link contextuality to non-locality.

Universal contextuality serves as a criterion of non-classicality.

Abstract

The notion of contextuality, which emerges from a theorem established by Simon Kochen and Ernst Specker (1960-1967) and by John Bell (1964-1966), is certainly one of the most fundamental aspects of quantum weirdness. If it is a questioning on scholastic philosophy and a study of contrafactual logic that led Specker to his demonstration with Kochen, it was a criticism of von Neumann's "proof" that led John Bell to the result. A misinterpretation of this famous "proof" will lead them to diametrically opposite conclusions. Over the last decades, remarkable theoretical progresses have been made on the subject in the context of the study of quantum foundations and quantum information. Thus, the graphic generalizations of Cabello-Severini-Winter and Acin-Fritz-Leverrier-Sainz raise the question of the connection between non-locality and contextuality. It is also the case of the sheaf-theoretic approach of Samson Abramsky et al., which also invites us to compare contextuality with the logical structure of certain classical logical paradoxes. Another approach, initiated by Robert Spekkens, generalizes the concept to any type of experimental procedure. This new form of "universal" contextuality has been raised as a criterion of non-classicality, i.e. of weirdness. It notably led to identify the nature of curious quantum paradoxes involving post-selections and weak measurements. In the light of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Kochen-Specker theorem, this report aims to introduce these results little known to the French scientific public, in the context of an investigation on the nature of the weirdness of quantum physics.