Contextuality in Sequential State Discrimination

Quantum Physics arXiv:2608.04099 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 4 Aug 2026] Title:Contextuality in Sequential State Discrimination Authors:Nyan Raess, Farid Shahandeh View a PDF of the paper titled Contextuality in Sequential State Discrimination, by Nyan Raess and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Generalized contextuality is known to be required in optimal strategies for quantum state discrimination protocols. More recently, sequential discrimination tasks have been studied; n players attempt to determine in which state a qubit was prepared, in such a way that they all have a finite probability of success. We consider the extent to which contextuality plays a role in sequential versions of both unambiguous and minimum error discrimination. In the standard nonsequential case where n = 1, we use the COPE formalism to demonstrate that the presence of contextuality is guaranteed not only for the optimal measurement, but for a specific set of nonoptimal measurements as well. In the sequential case n > 1, we show that the presence of contextuality depends on which states are prepared, and on the protocol (unambiguous or minimum error) selected. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) MSC classes: 81P13 (Primary) 81P18, 81P45 (Secondary) Cite as: arXiv:2608.04099 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2608.04099v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.04099 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Nyan Raess [view email] [v1] Tue, 4 Aug 2026 18:00:07 UTC (112 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Contextuality in Sequential State Discrimination, by Nyan Raess and 1 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-08 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)