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This work explores the implications of the Exclusivity Principle (EP) in the context of quantum and post-quantum correlations. We first establish a key technical result demonstrating that given the set of correlations for a complementary experiment, the EP restricts the maximum set of correlations for the original experiment to the anti-blocking set. Based on it, we can prove our central result: if all quantum behaviors are accessible in Nature, the EP guarantees that no post-quantum behaviors can be realized. This can be seen as a generalization of the result of [Phys. Rev. A 89, 030101(R)], to a wider range of scenarios. It also provides novel insights into the structure of quantum correlations and their limitations., Comment: 5 pages

We present a characterization of the Hamiltonians that generate optimal-speed unitary time evolution and the associated dynamical trajectory, where the initial states are either pure states or quasi-pure quantum states. We construct the manifold of pure states as an orbit under the conjugation action of the Lie group $\SU(n)$ on the manifold of one-dimensional orthogonal projectors, obtaining an isometry with the flag manifold $\SU(n)/\textnormal{S}(\textnormal{U}(1)\times \textnormal{U}(n-1 ))$. From this construction, we show that Hamiltonians generating optimal-speed time evolution are fully characterized by equigeodesic vectors of $\SU(n)/\textnormal{S}(\textnormal{U}(1)\times \textnormal{U}(n-1))$. We later extend that result to quasi-pure quantum states., Comment: 14 pages

The relations between Bell nonlocality and Kochen-Specker contextuality have been subject of research from many different perspectives in the last decades. Recently, some interesting results on these relations have been explored in the so-called generalized Bell scenarios, that is, scenarios where Bell spatial separation (or agency independence) coexist with (at least one of the) parties' ability to perform compatible measurements at each round of the experiment. When this party has an $n$-cycle compatiblity setup, it was first claimed that Bell nonlocality could not be concomitantly observed with contextuality at this party's local experiment. However, by a more natural reading of the definition of locality, it turns out that both Bell nonlocality and local contextuality can, in fact, be jointly present. In spite of it, in this work we prove that there cannot be arbitrary amounts of both of these two resources together. That is, we show the existence of a trade-off relation between Bell nonlocality and local contextuality in such scenarios. We explore this trade-off both in terms of inequalities and quantifiers, and we discuss how it can be understood in terms of a `global' notion of contextuality. Furthermore, we show that such notion does not only encompass local contextuality and Bell nonlocality, but also other forms of nonclassical correlations.

KS-contextuality is a crucial feature of quantum theory. Previous research demonstrated the vanishing of $N$-cycle KS-contextuality in setups where multiple independent observers measure sequentially on the same system, which we call Public Systems. This phenomenon can be explained as the additional observers' measurements degrading the state and depleting the quantum resource. This explanation would imply that state-independent contextuality should survive in such a system. In this paper, we show that this is not the case. We achieved this result by simulating an observer trying to violate the Peres-Mermin noncontextuality inequality in a Public System. Additionally, we provide an analytical description of our setup, explaining the loss of contextuality even in the state-independent case. Ultimately, these results show that state-independent contextuality is not independent of what happens to the system in-between the measurements of a context., Comment: 8+3 pages, 5 figures. Revised justification for Eq. (11), results unchanged

Bell nonlocality and Kochen-Specker contextuality are among the main topics of 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 considering 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.

A necessary condition for the probabilities of a set of events to exhibit Bell nonlocality or Kochen-Specker contextuality is that the graph of exclusivity of the events contains induced odd cycles with five or more vertices, called odd holes, or their complements, called odd antiholes. From this perspective, events whose graph of exclusivity are odd holes or antiholes are the building blocks of contextuality. For any odd hole or antihole, any assignment of probabilities allowed by quantum mechanics can be achieved in specific contextuality scenarios. However, here we prove that, for any odd hole, the probabilities that attain the quantum maxima cannot be achieved in Bell scenarios. We also prove it for the simplest odd antiholes. This leads us to the conjecture that the quantum maxima for any of the building blocks cannot be achieved in Bell scenarios. This result sheds light on why the problem of whether a probability assignment is quantum is decidable, while whether a probability assignment within a given Bell scenario is quantum is, in general, undecidable. This also helps to undertand why identifying principles for quantum correlations is simpler when we start by identifying principles for quantum sets of probabilities defined with no reference to specific scenarios., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

Bell nonlocality and Kochen-Specker contextuality are two remarkable nonclassical features of quantum theory, related to strong correlations between outcomes of measurements performed on quantum systems. Both phenomena can be witnessed by the violation of certain inequalities, the simplest and most important of which are the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) and the Klyachko-Can-Binicio\v{g}lu-Shumovski (KCBS), for Bell nonlocality and Kochen-Specker contextuality, respectively. It has been shown that, using the most common interpretation of Bell scenarios, quantum systems cannot violate both inequalities concomitantly, thus suggesting a monogamous relation between the two phenomena. In this Letter, we show that the joint consideration of the CHSH and KCBS inequalities naturally calls for the so-called generalized Bell scenarios, which, contrary to the previous results, allows for joint violation of them. A photonic experiment thus tests the synchronous violation of both CHSH and KCBS inequalities. Our results agree with the theoretical predictions, thereby providing experimental proof of the coexistence of Bell nonlocality and Kochen-Specker contextuality in the simplest scenario, and shed new light for further explorations of nonclassical features of quantum systems., Comment: 5+6 pages, 3 figures. Comments welcome!

The CHSH inequalities are the most famous examples of Bell inequalities. Cabello, Severini, and Winter (CSW) came up with a graph approach to noncontextuality inequalities, which connects some graph-theoretic concepts to quantum and classical correlations. For example, the theta body of the exclusivity graph can be associated with the set of correlations achieved by quantum theory. Following the CSW approach, one may think that the theta body of the CHSH graph, is equal to the quantum set of the CHSH Bell inequality, but is this really true? All assumptions about the CHSH inequalities come from Bell scenarios, while CSW approach only demands the exclusivity structure of a non-contextuality (NC) scenario. To deal with the extra structure related to the presence of different players in a Bell scenario like CHSH, the colored-graph approach was introduced. Does it make any difference to think about CHSH as a Bell scenario or a more general NC scenario? The Bell CHSH inequality is represented by a bicolored graph and the NC CHSH inequality by a simple graph, which is the shadow of the colored graph. In general, we have that the theta body of the colored graph is a subset of the theta body of its shadow graph in the same way that the Lov\`asz number, which corresponds to the quantum bound, of the simple graph is greater than or equal to the Lov\`asz number of the colored graph. In the case of the CHSH inequality, we have that the Lov\`asz numbers are equal. Does this accident also hold for the corresponding quantum sets? Is it true that the theta bodies are equal, which would mean that every correlation reached by quantum theory applied to the CHSH NC scenario could also be obtained at the in principle more restrictive CHSH Bell scenario? In this paper our answer to such a question is negativ. This implies that there are quantum correlations which can not be obtained under Bell restrictions., Comment: v5: Some minor improvements added

Quantum Darwinism proposes that the proliferation of redundant information plays a major role in the emergence of objectivity out of the quantum world. Is this kind of objectivity necessarily classical? We show that if one takes Spekkens' notion of noncontextuality as the notion of classicality and the approach of Brand\~{a}o, Piani and Horodecki to quantum Darwinism, the answer to the above question is `yes', if the environment encodes sufficiently well the proliferated information. Moreover, we propose a threshold on this encoding, above which one can unambiguously say that classical objectivity has emerged under quantum Darwinism., Comment: Essentially the accepted version. Enhanced clarity, but main results stand the same. Addition of two new subsections: 1- a cutoff for classical objectivity 2-state spectrum broadcasting case (+ the relative subsections to the appendix). For the final version, please look at PRX Quantum. 8 pages, 2 figures in the main text + 7 pages, 1 figure in the Appendix. Comments are welcome!

With the birth of quantum information science, many tools have been developed to deal with many-body quantum systems. Although a complete description of such systems is desirable, it will not always be possible to achieve this goal, as the complexity of such description tends to increase with the number of particles. It is thus crucial to build effective quantum theories aiming to understand how the description in one scale emerges from the description of a deeper scale. This contribution explores different mathematical tools to the study of emergent effective dynamics in scenarios where a system is subject to a unitary evolution and the coarse-grained description of it is given by a CPTP map taking the original system into an \emph{effective} Hilbert space of smaller dimension. We see that a well-defined effective dynamics can only be defined when some sort of matching between the underlying unitary and the coarse-graining map is satisfied. Our main goal is to use these different tools to derive necessary and sufficient conditions for this matching in the general case., Comment: Updated Version. Suggestions are welcome! =)

Using Bell-inequalities as a tool to explore non-classical physical behaviours, in this paper we analyze what one can expect to find in many-body quantum physics. Concretely, framing the usual correlation scenarios as a concrete spin-lattice, we want to know whether or not it is possible to violate a Bell-inequality restricted to this scenario. Using clustering theorems, we are able to show that a large family of quantum many-body systems behave almost locally, violating Bell-inequalities (if so) only by a non-significant amount. We also provide examples, explain some of our assumptions via counter-examples and present all the proofs for our theorems. We hope the paper is self-contained., Comment: 12 pages. 3 figures. Comments are welcome!

Contextuality is the failure of "local" probabilistic models to become global ones. In this paper we introduce the notions of \emph{measurable fibre bundles}, \emph{probability fibre bundles}, and \emph{sample fibre bundle} which capture and make precise the former statement. The central notions of contextuality are discussed under this formalism, examples worked out, and some new aspects pointed out., Comment: 14 pages; no figures; Purdue-Winer Memorial Lectures 2018; submitted to Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A. Comments are very welcome

Contextuality is regarded as a non-classical feature, challenging our everyday intuition; quantum contextuality is currently seen as a resource for many applications in quantum computation, being responsible for quantum advantage over classical analogs. In our work, we adapt the $N$-cycle scenarios with odd $N$ to multiple independent observers which measure the system sequentially. We analyze the possibility of violating the inequalities as a function of the number of observers and under different measurement protocols. We then reinterpret the results as an open quantum system where the environment is divided into fragments. In this context, the results show the emergence of non-contextuality in such a setting, bringing together the quantum behavior to our classical experience. We then compare such emergence of non-contextuality with that of objectivity under the `Environment as a Witness paradigm'., Comment: Extensively rewritten, while main results are maintained. Discussion of open systems and relation to emergence of objectivity is concentrated on section IV. 7+8 pages, 4+1 figures. Submitted to PRA

Incompatibility of observables, or measurements, is one of the key features of quantum mechanics, related, among other concepts, to Heisenberg's uncertainty relations and Bell nonlocality. In this manuscript we show, however, that even though incompatible measurements are necessary for the violation of any Bell inequality, some relevant Bell-like inequalities may be obtained if compatibility relations are assumed between the local measurements of one (or more) of the parties. Hence, compatibility of measurements is not necessarily a drawback and may, however, be useful for the detection of Bell nonlocality and device-independent certification of entanglement., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Comments welcome!

We propose a resource theory of the quantum invasiveness of general quantum operations, i.e., those defined by quantum channels in Leggett-Garg scenarios. We are then able to compare the resource-theoretic framework of quantum invasiveness to the resource theory of coherence. We also show that the Fisher information is a quantifier of quantum invasiveness. This result allows us to establish a direct connection between the concept of quantum invasiveness and quantum metrology, by exploring the utility of the definition of quantum invasiveness in the context of metrological protocols., Comment: Revised version, some substantial changes, to appear in PRA

We address the problem of characterising the compatible tuples of measurements that admit a unique joint measurement. We derive a uniqueness criterion based on the method of perturbations and apply it to show that extremal points of the set of compatible tuples admit a unique joint measurement, while all tuples that admit a unique joint measurement lie in the boundary of such a set. We also provide counter-examples showing that none of these properties are both necessary and sufficient, thus completely describing the relation between joint measurement uniqueness and the structure of the compatible set. As a by-product of our investigations, we completely characterise the extremal and boundary points of the set of general tuples of measurements and of the subset of compatible tuples., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures. v2, v3: minor corrections. v4: new proof of Thm. 3 and Cor. 4. The authors are thankful to Alessandro Toigo and Claudio Carmeli for pointing a flaw in the previous proof that restricted the theorem to pairs of POVMs

The connection between contextuality and graph theory has led to many developments in the field. In particular, the sets of probability distributions in many contextuality scenarios can be described using well known convex sets from graph theory, leading to a beautiful geometric characterization of such sets. This geometry can also be explored in the definition of contextuality quantifiers based on geometric distances, which is important for the resource theory of contextuality, developed after the recognition of contextuality as a potential resource for quantum computation. In this paper we review the geometric aspects of contextuality and use it to define several quantifiers, which have the advantage of being applicable to the exclusivity approach to contextuality, where previously defined quantifiers do not fit.

Contextuality is a fundamental feature of quantum theory and is necessary for quantum computation and communication. Serious steps have therefore been taken towards a formal framework for contextuality as an operational resource. However, the most important component for a resource theory - a concrete, explicit form for the free operations of contextuality - was still missing. Here we provide such a component by introducing noncontextual wirings: a physically-motivated class of contextuality-free operations with a friendly parametrization. We characterize them completely for the general case of black-box measurement devices with arbitrarily many inputs and outputs. As applications, we show that the relative entropy of contextuality is a contextuality monotone and that maximally contextual boxes that serve as contextuality bits exist for a broad class of scenarios. Our results complete a unified resource-theoretic framework for contextuality and Bell nonlocality.

We introduce a framework for simulating quantum measurements based on classical processing of a set of accessible measurements. Well-known concepts such as joint measurability and projective simulability naturally emerge as particular cases of our framework, but our study also leads to novel results and questions. First, a generalisation of joint measurability is derived, which yields a hierarchy for the incompatibility of sets of measurements. A similar hierarchy is defined based on the number of outcomes used to perform the simulation of a given measurement. This general approach also allows us to identify connections between different types of simulability and, in particular, we characterise the qubit measurements that are projective-simulable in terms of joint measurability. Finally, we discuss how our framework can be interpreted in the context of resource theories., Comment: 25 pages, single-column, 3 figures. Closer to published version

We address the problem of characterizing the steerability of quantum states under restrictive measurement scenarios, i.e., the problem of determining whether a quantum state can demonstrate steering when subjected to $N$ measurements of $k$ outcomes. We consider the cases of either general positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) or specific kinds of measurements (e.g., projective or symmetric). We propose general methods to calculate lower and upper bounds for the white-noise robustness of a $d$-dimensional quantum state under different measurement scenarios that are also applicable to the study of the noise robustness of the incompatibility of sets of unknown qudit measurements. We show that some mutually unbiased bases, symmetric informationally complete measurements, and other symmetric choices of measurements are not optimal for steering isotropic states and provide candidates to the most incompatible sets of measurements in each case. Finally, we provide numerical evidence that nonprojective POVMs do not improve over projective ones for this task., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. All code is available at https://git.io/v9znv