0000000000331445
AUTHOR
Gary Oas
Negative Probabilities and Contextuality
There has been a growing interest, both in physics and psychology, in understanding contextuality in experimentally observed quantities. Different approaches have been proposed to deal with contextual systems, and a promising one is contextuality-by-default, put forth by Dzhafarov and Kujala. The goal of this paper is to present a tutorial on a different approach: negative probabilities. We do so by presenting the overall theory of negative probabilities in a way that is consistent with contextuality-by-default and by examining with this theory some simple examples where contextuality appears, both in physics and psychology.
Measuring Observable Quantum Contextuality
Contextuality is a central property in comparative analysis of classical, quantum, and supercorrelated systems. We examine and compare two well-motivated approaches to contextuality. One approach (“contextuality-by-default”) is based on the idea that one and the same physical property measured under different conditions (contexts) is represented by different random variables. The other approach is based on the idea that while a physical property is represented by a single random variable irrespective of its context, the joint distributions of the random variables describing the system can involve negative (quasi-)probabilities. We show that in the Leggett-Garg and EPR-Bell systems, the two …