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In a bipartite Bell scenario involving two local measurements per party and two outcomes per measurement, the measurement incompatibility in one wing is both necessary and sufficient to reveal the nonlocality. However, such a one-to-one correspondence fails when one of the observers performs more than two measurements. In such a scenario, the measurement incompatibility is necessary but not sufficient to reveal the nonlocality. In this work, within the formalism of general probabilistic theory (GPT), we demonstrate that unlike the nonlocality, the incompatibility of N arbitrary measurements in one wing is both necessary and sufficient for revealing the generalised contextuality for the sub-system in the other wing. Further, we formulate an elegant form of inequality for any GPT that is necessary for N -wise compatibility of N arbitrary observables. Moreover, we argue that any theory that violates the proposed inequality possess a degree of incompatibility that can be quantified through the amount of violation. We claim that it is the generalised contextuality that provides a restriction to the allowed degree of measurement incompatibility of any viable theory of nature and thereby super-select the quantum theory. Finally, we discuss the geometrical implications of our results.

Motivated by the importance of contextuality and a work on the robustness of the entanglement of mixed quantum states, the robustness of contextuality (RoC) R C ( e ) of an empirical model e against non-contextual noises was introduced and discussed in Science China Physics, Mechanics and Astronomy (59(4) and 59(9), 2016). Because noises are not always non-contextual, this paper introduces and discusses the generalized robustness of contextuality (GRoC) R g ( e ) of an empirical model e against general noises. It is proven that R g ( e ) = 0 if and only if e is non-contextual. This means that the quantity R g can be used to distinguish contextual empirical models from non-contextual ones. It is also shown that the function R g is convex on the set of all empirical models and continuous on the set of all no-signaling empirical models. For any two empirical models e and f such that the generalized relative robustness of e with respect to f is finite, a fascinating relationship between the GRoCs of e and f is proven, which reads R g ( e ) R g ( f ) ≤ 1 . Lastly, for any n-cycle contextual box e, a relationship between the GRoC R g ( e ) and the extent Δ e of violating the non-contextual inequalities is established.

We present a new characterization of quantum theory in terms of simple physical principles that is different from previous ones in two important respects: first, it only refers to properties of single systems without any assumptions on the composition of many systems; and second, it is closer to experiment by having absence of higher-order interference as a postulate, which is currently the subject of experimental investigation. We give three postulates-no higher-order interference, classical decomposability of states, and strong symmetry-and prove that the only non-classical operational probabilistic theories satisfying them are real, complex, and quaternionic quantum theory, together with three-level octonionic quantum theory and ball state spaces of arbitrary dimension. Then we show that adding observability of energy as a fourth postulate yields complex quantum theory as the unique solution, relating the emergence of the complex numbers to the possibility of Hamiltonian dynamics. We also show that there may be interesting non-quantum theories satisfying only the first two of our postulates, which would allow for higher-order interference in experiments while still respecting the contextuality analogue of the local orthogonality principle.

Bell nonlocality and Kochen–Specker contextuality are among the main topics in the foundations of quantum theory. Both of them are related to stronger-than-classical correlations, with the former usually referring to spatially separated systems, while the latter considers a single system. In recent works, a unified framework for these phenomena was presented. This article reviews, expands, and obtains new results regarding this framework. Contextual and disturbing features inside the local models are explored, which allows for the definition of different local sets with a non-trivial relation among them. The relations between the set of quantum correlations and these local sets are also considered, and post-quantum local behaviours are found. Moreover, examples of correlations that are both local and non-contextual but such that these two classical features cannot be expressed by the same hidden variable model are shown. Extensions of the Fine–Abramsky–Brandenburger theorem are also discussed.

Quantum contextuality describes situations where the statistics observed in different measurement contexts cannot be explained by a measurement of the independent reality of the system. The most simple case is observed in a three-dimensional Hilbert space, with five different measurement contexts related to each other by shared measurement outcomes. The quantum formalism defines the relations between these contexts in terms of well-defined relations between operators, and these relations can be used to reconstruct an unknown quantum state from a finite set of measurement results. Here, I introduce a reconstruction method based on the relations between the five measurement contexts that can violate the bounds of non-contextual statistics. A complete description of an arbitrary quantum state requires only five of the eight elements of a Kirkwood–Dirac quasiprobability, but only an overcomplete set of eleven elements provides an unbiased description of all five contexts. A set of five fundamental relations between the eleven elements reveals a deterministic structure that links the five contexts. As illustrated by a number of examples, these relations provide a consistent description of contextual realities for the measurement outcomes of all five contexts.