Quantifiers and witnesses for the nonclassicality of measurements and of states

Abstract

In a recent work, arXiv:2503.05884, we proposed a unified notion of nonclassicality that applies to arbitrary processes in quantum theory, including individual quantum states, measurements, channels, set of these, etc. This notion is derived from the principle of generalized noncontextuality, but in a novel manner that applies to individual processes rather than full experiments or theories. Here, we provide novel certificates and measures for characterizing and quantifying the nonclassicality inherent in states, measurements, and sets thereof, using semidefinite programming techniques. These are theory-dependent, complementing theory-independent methods based on noncontextuality inequalities. We provide explicit applications of these ideas to many illustrative examples.