No generalised contextuality from the vacuum
Abstract
We show that, under certain conditions, generalised contextuality, in the sense introduced by Spekkens, cannot be created from the vacuum of a quantum field. Initial noncontextual qudit states do not become contextual just by interacting with a quantum field. This is verified in two scenarios. First, in a perturbative approach where the time evolution operator is expanded in powers of the coupling constant. Second, in the limit of zero energy gap in the spectrum of the free detector Hamiltonian. Our results are at the opposite side of what has been recently obtained in the literature regarding the harvesting of Kochen-Specker contextuality. Our results demonstrate that the existing notions of contextuality can be independent of one another and that contextuality harvesting depends on which precise notion is used.
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BibTeX
@misc{delgado2026generalised,
title = {{No generalised contextuality from the vacuum}},
author = {Ruben Campos Delgado and Selman Ipek},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.41964},
eprint = {2610.41964},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41964},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - No generalised contextuality from the vacuum
AU - Ruben Campos Delgado
AU - Selman Ipek
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.41964
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41964
AB - We show that, under certain conditions, generalised contextuality, in the sense introduced by Spekkens, cannot be created from the vacuum of a quantum field. Initial noncontextual qudit states do not become contextual just by interacting with a quantum field. This is verified in two scenarios. First, in a perturbative approach where the time evolution operator is expanded in powers of the coupling constant. Second, in the limit of zero energy gap in the spectrum of the free detector Hamiltonian. Our results are at the opposite side of what has been recently obtained in the literature regarding the harvesting of Kochen-Specker contextuality. Our results demonstrate that the existing notions of contextuality can be independent of one another and that contextuality harvesting depends on which precise notion is used.
ER -