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arXiv:quant-ph/0208127

Comment on a suggested Kochen-Specker test

R. L. Schafir

Published Aug 20, 2002• 0 citations
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Abstract

A suggestion for an observational test of the difference between quantum mechanics and noncontextual hidden variables theories requires the measurement of a product of two commuting observables without measuring either observable separately. A proposal has been made for doing this, but it is shown to be problematic.
DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0208127

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We propose a feasible Kochen–Specker experiment with single photons, whose goal is to submit noncontextual hidden-variable theories to nonstatistical, all-or-nothing tests. Our proposal improves some recently performed tests in two respects. First, the present proposal is state-independent, thereby realizing a scheme designed by Cabello and García-Alcaine that was only partially realized in recent experiments. Second, our proposal can deal with non-ideal detectors without invoking the fair sampling assumption.
It has recently been questioned whether the Kochen-Specker theorem is relevant to real experiments, which by necessity only have finite precision. We give an affirmative answer to this question by showing how to derive hidden-variable theorems that apply to real experiments, so that noncontextual hidden variables can indeed be experimentally disproved. The essential point is that for the derivation of hidden-variable theorems one does not have to know which observables are really measured by the apparatus. Predictions can be derived for observables that are defined in an entirely operational way.
Meyer [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 3751 (1999)] recently showed that the Kochen-Specker theorem, which demonstrates the impossibility of a deterministic hidden variable description of ideal spin measurements on a spin 1 particle, can be effectively nullified if only finite precision measurements are considered. We generalize this result: one can ascribe consistent outcomes to a dense subset of the set of projection valued measurements, or to a dense subset of the set of positive operator valued measurements, on any finite dimensional system. Hence no Kochen-Specker-like contradiction can rule out hidden variable theories indistinguishable from quantum theory by finite precision measurements in either class.