Stabilizer notation for Spekkens' toy theory

Abstract

Spekkens has introduced a toy theory [Phys. Rev. A, 75, 032110 (2007)] in order to argue for an epistemic view of quantum states. I describe a notation for the theory (excluding certain joint measurements) which makes its similarities and differences with the quantum mechanics of stabilizer states clear. Given an application of the qubit stabilizer formalism, it is often entirely straightforward to construct an analogous application of the notation to the toy theory. This assists calculations within the toy theory, for example of the number of possible states and transformations, and enables superpositions to be defined for composite systems.

7+4 pages, 5 tables. v2: Clarifications added and typos fixed in response to referee comments

References in corpus (1)

• Multi-party entanglement in graph states

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