Contextuality in bosonic bunching.
In the classical probability theory a sum of probabilities of three pairwise exclusive events is always bounded by one. This is also true in quantum mechanics if these events are represented by pairwise orthogonal projectors. However, this might not be true if the three events refer to a system of indistinguishable particles. We show that one can find three pairwise exclusive events for a system of three bosonic particles whose corresponding probabilities sum to 3/2. This can be done under assumptions of realism and noncontextuality, i.e., that it is possible to assign outcomes to events before measurements are performed and in a way that does not depend on a particular measurement setup. The root of this phenomenon comes from the fact that for indistinguishable particles there are events that can be deduced to be exclusive under the aforementioned assumptions, but at the same time are complementary because the corresponding projectors are not orthogonal.
Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore, Singapore and Faculty of Physics, Adam Mickiewicz University, Umultowska 85, 61-614 Poznań, Poland.
Paweł
P
Kurzyński
Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore, Singapore.
Akihito
A
Soeda
Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore, Singapore.
Jayne
J
Thompson
Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore, Singapore and Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 2, 117543 Singapore, Singapore.
Dagomir
D
Kaszlikowski