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Main Author: Delgado, Ruben Campos
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17967
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author Delgado, Ruben Campos
author_facet Delgado, Ruben Campos
contents We show that the operational definition of contextuality introduced by Spekkens is, in general, not Lorentz invariant. Specifically, we consider an explicit example with particle states consisting of both spin and momentum, we apply a Lorentz transformation to obtain the states in a new inertial frame, and then trace out the momentum degrees of freedom in both frames. We find that, while an observer in the first inertial frame describes a contextual ontological model with respect to spin states and all possible spin measurements, an observer in the boosted frame describes a non-contextual model with respect to the transformed spin states and all transformed spin measurements. Hence, the Spekkens' notion of contextuality, when restricted to spin degress of freedom only, is a frame-dependent concept. We apply our results to predict a novel relativistic effect concerning the task of discriminating between two quantum states. We show that the probability of success for a moving observer exceeds that of an observer at rest.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17967
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Frame dependence of Spekkens' contextuality for relativistic spin systems
Delgado, Ruben Campos
Quantum Physics
We show that the operational definition of contextuality introduced by Spekkens is, in general, not Lorentz invariant. Specifically, we consider an explicit example with particle states consisting of both spin and momentum, we apply a Lorentz transformation to obtain the states in a new inertial frame, and then trace out the momentum degrees of freedom in both frames. We find that, while an observer in the first inertial frame describes a contextual ontological model with respect to spin states and all possible spin measurements, an observer in the boosted frame describes a non-contextual model with respect to the transformed spin states and all transformed spin measurements. Hence, the Spekkens' notion of contextuality, when restricted to spin degress of freedom only, is a frame-dependent concept. We apply our results to predict a novel relativistic effect concerning the task of discriminating between two quantum states. We show that the probability of success for a moving observer exceeds that of an observer at rest.
title Frame dependence of Spekkens' contextuality for relativistic spin systems
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17967