Degrees, Levels, and Profiles of Contextuality

Abstract

We introduce a new notion, that of a contextuality profile of a system. Rather than characterizing a system's contextuality by a single number, its overall degree of contextuality, we show how it can be characterized by a curve relating degree of contextuality to level at which the system is considered,arrayc|c|c|c|c|c|c|c level & 1 & & n-1 & n>1 & n+1 & & N\\ degree & 0 & & 0 & d_n>0 & d_n+1 d_n & & d_N d_N-1 array,where N is the maximum number of variables per system's context. A system is represented at level n if one only considers the joint distributions with k n variables, ignoring higher-order joint distributions. We show that the level-wise contextuality analysis can be used in conjunction with any well-constructed measure of contextuality. We present a method of concatenated systems to explore contextuality profiles systematically, and we apply it to the contextuality profiles for three major measures of contextuality proposed in the literature.

Reproductions