Quantum correlations with a gap between the sequential and spatial cases

Abstract

We address the problem of whether parties who cannot communicate but share nonsignaling quantum correlations between the outcomes of sharp measurements can distinguish, just from the value of a correlation observable, whether their outcomes were produced by sequential compatible measurements on single systems or by measurements on spatially separated subsystems. We show that there are quantum correlations between the outcomes of sequential measurements which cannot be attained with spatially separated systems. We present examples of correlations between spatially separated systems whose quantum maximum tends to the sequential maximum as the number of parties increases and examples of correlations between spatially separated systems whose quantum maximum fails to violate the noncontextual bound while its corresponding sequential version does.