The Non-Disjoint Ontic States of the Grassmann Ontological Model, Transformation Contextuality, and the Single Qubit Stabilizer Subtheory

Abstract

We show that it is possible to construct a preparation non-contextual ontological model that does not exhibit "transformation contextuality" for single qubits in the stabilizer subtheory. In particular, we consider the "blowtorch" map and show that it does not exhibit transformation contextuality under the Grassmann Wigner-Weyl-Moyal (WWM) qubit formalism. Furthermore, the transformation in this formalism can be fully expressed at order ${\hslash }^0$ and so does not qualify as a candidate quantum phenomenon. In particular, we find that the Grassmann WWM formalism at order ${\hslash }^0$ corresponds to an ontological model governed by an additional set of constraints arising from the relations defining the Grassmann algebra. Due to this additional set of constraints, the allowed probability distributions in this model do not form a single convex set when expressed in terms of disjoint ontic states and so cannot be mapped to models whose states form a single convex set over disjoint ontic states. However, expressing the Grassmann WWM ontological model in terms of non-disjoint ontic states corresponding to the monomials of the Grassmann algebra results in a single convex set. We further show that a recent result by Lillystone et al. that proves a broad class of preparation and measurement non-contextual ontological models must exhibit transformation contextuality lacks the generality to include the ontological model considered here; Lillystone et al.'s result is appropriately limited to ontological models whose states produce a single convex set when expressed in terms of disjoint ontic states. Therefore, we prove that for the qubit stabilizer subtheory to be captured by a preparation, transformation and measurement non-contextual ontological theory, it must be expressed in terms of non-disjoint ontic states, unlike the case for the odd-dimensional single-qudit stabilizer subtheory.

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