Measurement incompatibility and steering are necessary and sufficient for operational contextuality

Armin Tavakoli, Roope Uola

Published 2019-05-09Version 1

Contextuality is a signature of operational nonclassicality in the outcome statistics of an experiment. This notion of nonclassicality applies to a breadth of physical phenomena. Here, we establish its relation to two fundamental nonclassical entities in quantum theory; measurement incompatibility and steering. We show that each is necessary and sufficient the failure of preparation noncontextuality and measurement noncontextuality respectively, and therefore necessitates an operational proof of nonclassicality. We exploit the established connection to contextuality to provide a novel approach to problems in measurement incompatibility and steering.