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arXiv:2607.02754

Possibilistic collapse and extremality of simplicial distributions

Aziz Kharoof, Cihan Okay

math.CTmath.ATquant-phSubmitted Jul 2, 2026• Announced Jul 6, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Consistent families of locally defined probability distributions that do not admit a joint global distribution are known as contextual, with primary examples arising in quantum theory. In this paper, we study such families of distributions using the theory of simplicial distributions, and further develop the theory for possibilistic distributions defined over the Boolean semiring. We characterize possibilistic collapses of simplicial distributions geometrically using bundle scenarios. Using this characterization together with a new connectivity condition on the total space of a bundle scenario, we provide a criterion for detecting extremal simplicial distributions. In parallel, we develop an analogous theory for presheaves on simplicial complexes, describe possibilistic collapses of empirical models on them using event scenarios together with a categorical extremality condition, and relate the two frameworks via a comparison result. We provide examples of contextual simplicial distributions that arise from our criteria on scenarios of interest in quantum foundations, such as Bell scenarios and boundaries of standard simplices, the latter connecting to Vorob'ev's classical theorem on acyclic complexes.

Comments
48 pages, 8 figures

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Consistent families of locally defined probability distributions that do not admit a joint global distribution are known as contextual, with primary examples arising in quantum theory. In this paper, we study such families of distributions using the theory of simplicial distributions, and further develop the theory for possibilistic distributions defined over the Boolean semiring. We characterize possibilistic collapses of simplicial distributions geometrically using bundle scenarios. Using this characterization together with a new connectivity condition on the total space of a bundle scenario, we provide a criterion for detecting extremal simplicial distributions. In parallel, we develop an analogous theory for presheaves on simplicial complexes, describe possibilistic collapses of empirical models on them using event scenarios together with a categorical extremality condition, and relate the two frameworks via a comparison result. We provide examples of contextual simplicial distributions that arise from our criteria on scenarios of interest in quantum foundations, such as Bell scenarios and boundaries of standard simplices, the latter connecting to Vorob'ev's classical theorem on acyclic complexes.
The data of a physical experiment can be represented as a presheaf of probability distributions.A striking feature of quantum theory is that those probability distributions obtained in quantum mechanical experiments do not always admit a joint probability distribution, a celebrated observation due to Bell.Such distributions are called contextual.Simplicial distributions are combinatorial models that extend presheaves of probability distributions by elevating sets of measurements and outcomes to spaces.Contextuality can be defined in this generalized setting.This paper introduces the notion of convex categories to study simplicial distributions from a categorical perspective.Simplicial distributions can be given the structure of a convex monoid, a convex category with a single object, when the outcome space has the structure of a group.We describe contextuality as a monoid-theoretic notion by introducing a weak version of invertibility for monoids.Our main result is that a simplicial distribution is noncontextual if and only if it is weakly invertible.Similarly, strong contextuality and contextual fraction can be characterized in terms of invertibility in monoids.Finally, we show that simplicial homotopy can be used to detect extremal simplicial distributions refining the earlier methods based on Čech cohomology and the cohomology of groups.The authors would like to thank the anonymous referee for useful comments that significantly improved the exposition of the paper, and Walker H. Stern and Redi Haderi for enlightening discussions.
We develop tools for characterizing vertices of fiber products of polytopes and apply them to simplicial distribution polytopes, a class of probability polytopes arising in quantum foundations and quantum information. In the theory of simplicial distributions, a pair of simplicial sets encoding measurement and outcome spaces determines a convex polytope of compatible probability assignments. Our first results give geometric criteria for detecting vertices of fiber products in terms of support data. These results are obtained in the more general framework of inverse limits of diagrams of polytopes in standard form, and they translate to corresponding criteria for simplicial distributions on arbitrary colimits of measurement spaces. We then focus on one-dimensional measurement spaces, where simplicial distributions recover and generalize local marginal polytopes in graphical models. In this setting, our sharpest results concern dipole graphs, for which we obtain a complete characterization of vertices and refine it to a graph-theoretic criterion. These characterizations are reminiscent of the classical support-graph criteria for transportation polytopes, but they arise in a richer class of polytopes in which vertex structure depends not only on support acyclicity but also on additional geometric compatibility data. Using the collapsing method from simplicial topology, we transfer the dipole characterization to rose graphs and obtain analogous results there. Finally, we apply collapsing to complete bipartite graphs, which encode physically relevant bipartite Bell scenarios, and more generally to arbitrary connected graphs, yielding lower bounds on the number of vertices.
We introduce a new framework for contextuality based on simplicial sets, combinatorial models of topological spaces that play a prominent role in modern homotopy theory. Our approach extends measurement scenarios to consist of spaces (rather than sets) of measurements and outcomes, and thereby generalizes nonsignaling distributions to simplicial distributions, which are distributions on spaces modeled by simplicial sets. Using this formalism we present a topologically inspired new proof of Fine's theorem for characterizing noncontextuality in Bell scenarios. Strong contextuality is generalized suitably for simplicial distributions, allowing us to define cohomological witnesses that extend the earlier topological constructions restricted to algebraic relations among quantum observables to the level of probability distributions. Foundational theorems of quantum theory such as the Gleason's theorem and Kochen--Specker theorem can be expressed naturally within this new language.
Quantum measurements often exhibit non-classical features, such as contextuality, which generalizes Bell's non-locality and serves as a resource in various quantum computation models. Existing frameworks have rigorously captured these phenomena, and recently, simplicial distributions have been introduced to deepen this understanding. The geometrical structure of simplicial distributions can be seen as a resource for applications in quantum information theory. In this work, we use topological foundations to study this geometrical structure, leveraging the fact that, in this simplicial framework, measurements and outcomes are represented as spaces. This allows us to depict contextuality as a topological phenomenon. We show that applying the cone construction to the measurement space makes the corresponding non-signaling polytope equal to the join of mmm copies of the original polytope, where mmm is the number of possible outcomes per measurement. Then we glue two copies of cone measurement spaces to obtain a suspension measurement space. The decomposition done for simplicial distributions on a cone measurement space provides deeper insights into the geometry of simplicial distributions on a suspension measurement space and aids in characterizing the contextuality there. Additionally, we apply these results to derive a new type of Bell inequalities (inequalities that determine the set of local joint probabilities/non-contextual simplicial distributions) and to offer a mathematical explanation for certain contextual vertices from the literature.
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.
Simplicial distributions are combinatorial models describing distributions on spaces of measurements and outcomes that generalize nonsignaling distributions on contextuality scenarios. This paper studies simplicial distributions on two-dimensional measurement spaces by introducing new topological methods. Two key ingredients are a geometric interpretation of Fourier–Motzkin elimination and a technique based on the collapsing of measurement spaces. Using the first one, we provide a new proof of Fine’s theorem characterizing noncontextual distributions in N-cycle scenarios. Our approach goes beyond these scenarios and can describe noncontextual distributions in scenarios obtained by gluing cycle scenarios of various sizes. The second technique is used for detecting contextual vertices and deriving new Bell inequalities. Combined with these methods, we explore a monoid structure on simplicial distributions.