Gadget structures in proofs of the Kochen-Specker theorem

The Kochen-Specker theorem is a fundamental result in quantum foundations that has spawned massive interest since its inception. We show that within every Kochen-Specker graph, there exist interesting subgraphs which we term $01$-gadgets, that capture the essential contradiction necessary to prove t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ravishankar Ramanathan, Monika Rosicka, Karol Horodecki, Stefano Pironio, Michał Horodecki, Paweł Horodecki
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Verein zur Förderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften 2020-08-01
Series:Quantum
Online Access:https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2020-08-14-308/pdf/
Description
Summary:The Kochen-Specker theorem is a fundamental result in quantum foundations that has spawned massive interest since its inception. We show that within every Kochen-Specker graph, there exist interesting subgraphs which we term $01$-gadgets, that capture the essential contradiction necessary to prove the Kochen-Specker theorem, i.e,. every Kochen-Specker graph contains a $01$-gadget and from every $01$-gadget one can construct a proof of the Kochen-Specker theorem. Moreover, we show that the $01$-gadgets form a fundamental primitive that can be used to formulate state-independent and state-dependent statistical Kochen-Specker arguments as well as to give simple constructive proofs of an ``extended'' Kochen-Specker theorem first considered by Pitowsky in \cite{Pitowsky}.
ISSN:2521-327X