Contextuality sans incompatibility in the simplest scenario: Communication supremacy of a qubit

Abstract

Conventional wisdom asserts that measurement incompatibility is necessary for revealing the non-locality and contextuality. In contrast, a recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 230201 (2023)] demonstrates the generalized contextuality without measurement incompatibility by using a five-outcome qubit measurement. In this paper, we introduce a two-party prepare-measure communication game involving specific constraints on preparations, and we demonstrate contextuality sans incompatibility in the simplest measurement scenario, requiring only a three-outcome extremal qubit measurement. This contrasts with the aforementioned five-outcome qubit measurement, which can be simulated by an appropriate convex mixture of five three-outcome incompatible qubit measurements. Furthermore, we illustrate that our result has a prominent implication in information theory. Our communication game can be perceived as a constrained Holevo-Frankle-Weiner (HFW) scenario, as operational restrictions are imposed on preparations. We show that the maximum success probability of the game by using a qubit surpasses that attainable by a c-bit, even when shared randomness is a free resource. Consequently, this finding exemplifies the supremacy of a qubit over a c-bit within a constrained HFW framework. Thus, alongside offering fresh insights into quantum foundations, our results pave a novel pathway for exploring the efficacy of a qubit in information processing tasks.