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arXiv:1904.10035 · ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS)

A comonadic view of simulation and quantum resources

Samson Abramsky, Rui Soares Barbosa, Martti Karvonen, Shane Mansfield

Published Jun 1, 2019• 20 citations
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Abstract

We study simulation and quantum resources in the setting of the sheaf-theoretic approach to contextuality and nonlocality. Resources are viewed behaviourally, as empirical models. In earlier work, a notion of morphism for these empirical models was proposed and studied. We generalize and simplify the earlier approach, by starting with a very simple notion of morphism, and then extending it to a more useful one by passing to a co-Kleisli category with respect to a comonad of measurement protocols. We show that these morphisms capture notions of simulation between empirical models obtained via “free” operations in a resource theory of contextuality, including the type of classical control used in measurement-based quantum computation schemes.

DOI
10.1109/lics.2019.8785677

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We study simulation and quantum resources in the setting of the sheaf-theoretic approach to contextuality and nonlocality. Resources are viewed behaviourally, as empirical models. In earlier work, a notion of morphism for these empirical models was proposed and studied. We generalize and simplify the earlier approach, by starting with a very simple notion of morphism, and then extending it to a more useful one by passing to a co-Kleisli category with respect to a comonad of measurement protocols. We show that these morphisms capture notions of simulation between empirical models obtained via “free” operations in a resource theory of contextuality, including the type of classical control used in measurement-based quantum computation schemes.
A notion of morphism that is suitable for the sheaf-theoretic approach to contextuality is developed, resulting in a resource theory for contextuality. The key features involve using an underlying relation rather than a function between measurement scenarios, and allowing for stochastic mappings of outcomes to outcomes. This formalizes an intuitive idea of using one empirical model to simulate another one with the help of pre-shared classical randomness. This allows one to reinterpret concepts and earlier results in terms of morphisms. Most notably: non-contextual models are precisely those allowing a morphism from the terminal object; contextual fraction is functorial; Graham-reductions induce morphisms, reinterpreting Vorob'evs theorem; contextual models cannot be cloned.
Quantum theory departs from classical physics in its treatment of correlations, most prominently through the phenomena of contextuality and nonlocality. Once regarded primarily as foundational curiosities, these effects are now understood as key operational resources for quantum computation, communication, and simulation. Although traditionally investigated in distinct settings, recent theoretical and experimental advances have revealed deep conceptual, mathematical, and operational connections between them. This review presents a unified perspective on these developments based on sheaf-theoretic and graph-theoretic frameworks, which provide theory-independent characterizations of statistical correlations. These approaches clarify the structural relationship between contextuality and nonlocality, facilitate the formulation of experimentally testable inequalities, and guide implementations in realistic physical platforms, with particular emphasis on photonic systems. By bridging abstract theoretical structures and concrete experimental realizations, this review sheds light on the nonclassical foundations of quantum correlations and their emerging role in quantum technologies.
We develop a resource theory of contextuality within the framework of symmetric monoidal categories, extending recent simplicial approaches to quantum contextuality. Building on the theory of simplicial distributions, which integrates homotopy-theoretic structures with probability, we introduce event scenarios as a functorial generalization of presheaf-theoretic measurement scenarios and prove their equivalence to bundle scenarios via the Grothendieck construction. We define symmetric monoidal structures on these categories and extend the distribution functor to a stochastic setting, yielding a resource theory that generalizes the presheaf-theoretic notion of simulations. Our main result characterizes convex maps between simplicial distributions in terms of non-contextual distributions on a corresponding mapping scenario, enhancing and extending prior results in categorical quantum foundations.
Contextuality has been identified as a potential resource responsible for the quantum advantage in several tasks. It is then necessary to develop a resource-theoretic framework for contextuality, both in its standard and generalized forms. Here we provide a formal resource-theoretic approach for generalized contextuality based on a physically motivated set of free operations with an explicit parametrization. Then, using an efficient linear programming characterization for the noncontextual set of prepared-and-measured statistics, we adapt known resource quantifiers for contextuality and nonlocality to obtain natural monotones for generalized contextuality in arbitrary prepare-and-measure experiments.
Resource theories constitute a powerful theoretical framework and a tool that captures, in an abstract structure, pragmatic aspects of the most varied theories and processes.For physical theories, while this framework deals directly with questions about the concrete possibilities of carrying out tasks and processes, resource theories also make it possible to recast these already established theories on a new language, providing not only new perspectives on the potential of physical phenomena as valuable resources for technological development, for example, but they also provide insights into the very foundations of these theories.In this work, we will investigate some properties of a resource theory for quantum contextuality, an essential characteristic of quantum phenomena that ensures the impossibility of interpreting the results of quantum measurements as revealing properties that are independent of the set of measurements being made.We will present the resource theory to be studied and investigate certain global properties of this theory using tools and methods that, although already developed and studied by the community in other resource theories, had not yet been used to characterize resource theories of contextuality.In particular, we will use the so called cost and yield monotones, making use of their power in the study of resource theories for nonlocality, in an attempt to extend these results to this more general class of phenomena, contextuality.
Contextuality is a fundamental feature of quantum theory necessary for certain models of quantum computation and communication. Serious steps have therefore been taken towards a formal framework for contextuality as an operational resource. However, the main ingredient of a resource theory-a concrete, explicit form of free operations of contextuality-was still missing. Here we provide such a component by introducing noncontextual wirings: a class of contextuality-free operations with a clear operational interpretation and a friendly parametrization. We characterize them completely for general black-box measurement devices with arbitrarily many inputs and outputs. As applications, we show that the relative entropy of contextuality is a contextuality monotone and that maximally contextual boxes that serve as contextuality bits exist for a broad class of scenarios. Our results complete a unified resource-theoretic framework for contextuality and Bell nonlocality.