# A Kochen-Specker Theorem for Imprecisely Specified Measurements

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## Abstract

A recent claim that finite precision in the design of real experiments “nullifies” the impact of the Kochen-Specker theorem, is shown to be unsupportable, because of the continuity of probabilities of measurement outcomes under slight changes in the experimental configuration.

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The Kochen-Specker (KS) theorem is one of the major no-hidden-variables theorems of quantum mechanics. It exhibits a finite set of finite-valued observables with the following property: there is no way to associate with each observable in the set a particular one of its eigenvalues so that the eigenvalues associated with every subset of mutually commuting observables obey certain algebraic identities obeyed by the observables themselves. Such a set of observables is traditionally called uncolorable.

The physical significance of an uncolorable set of observables stems from the fact that a simultaneous measurement of a mutually commuting set must yield a set of simultaneous eigenvalues, which are constrained to obey the algebraic identities obeyed by the observables themselves. So any attempt to assign every observable in a KS uncolorable set a preexisting noncontextual value (a “hidden variable”) that is simply revealed by a measurement, will necessarily assign to at least one mutually commuting subset of observables a set of values specifying results that quantum mechanics forbids.

The term “noncontextual” emphasizes that the disagreement with quantum mechanics only arises if the value associated with each observable is required to be independent of the choice of the other mutually commuting observables with which it is measured. Contextual value assignments in full agreement with all quantum mechanical constraints can, in fact, be made. The import of the KS theorem is that there exist sets of observables — “uncolorable sets” — for which any assignment of preexisting values must be contextual if all the outcomes specified by those values are allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics. The theorem prohibits noncontextual hidden-variable theories that agree with all the quantitative predictions of quantum mechanics.

Meyer and Kent have questioned the relevance of the KS theorem to the outcomes of real imperfect laboratory experiments, by constructing some clever noncontextual assignments of eigenvalues to every observable in a dense subset of observables, whose closure contains the KS uncolorable observables. While no KS uncolorable set can be contained in such a dense colorable subset, observables in the dense colorable subset can be found arbitrarily close to every observable in any KS uncolorable set. This leads Meyer and Kent to assert that their noncontextual value assignments to dense sets of observables “nullify” the KS theorem. In support of this claim they note that observables measured in an actual experiment cannot be specified with perfect precision so, in Kent’s words, “no Kochen-Specker-like contradiction can rule out hidden variable theories indistinguishable from quantum theory by finite precision measurements$`\mathrm{}`$.”

I show below that this plausible-sounding but not entirely sharply formulated intuition dissolves under close scrutiny. First I describe how the KS conclusion that quantum mechanics requires any assignment of pre-existing values to be contextual can be deduced directly from the data, even when one is not sure precisely which observables are actually being measured. Then I identify where the intuition of Meyer and Kent goes astray.

At first glance it is not evident that either a KS uncolorable set or a Meyer-Kent (MK) dense colorable set of observables is relevant when one cannot specify to more than a certain high precision what observables are actually being measured. As traditionally viewed, the KS theorem merely makes a point about the formal structure of quantum mechanics, telling us that there is no consistent way to interpret the theory in terms of the statistical behavior of an ensemble, in each individual member of which every observable in the theory has a unique noncontextual value waiting to be revealed by any appropriate measurement. Upon further reflection, however, there emerges a straightforward way to apply the result of the KS theorem to measurements specified with high but imperfect precision, which makes it evident that the theorem and its various descendants remain entirely relevant to imperfect experiments, while the ingenious constructions of Meyer and Kent do not.

Let us first rephrase the implications of the KS theorem in the ideal case of perfectly specified measurements. The theorem gives a finite uncolorable set of observables, each with a finite number of eigenvalues. Because the number of possible assignments of noncontextual values to observables in the set is finite, no matter what probabilities are used to associate such values with the observables, the assignment must give nonzero probability to at least one mutually commuting subset of the observables having values that disagree with the laws of quantum mechanics. So if noncontextual preexisting values existed and if one could carry out a series of ideal experiments in each of which one measured a randomly selected subset of perfectly defined mutually commuting observables from a KS uncolorable set, then a definite nonzero fraction of those measurements would produce results violating the laws of quantum mechanics.

Conversely, if an appropriately large number of such randomly selected measurements all yielded results satisfying the relevant quantum mechanical constraints, then in the absence of bizarre conspiratorial correlations between one’s random choice of which mutually commuting subset to measure and the hypothetical preexisting noncontextual values waiting to be revealed by that measurement, one would have established directly from the ideal data that there could be no preexisting noncontextual values.

In a real experiment, of course, the observables cannot be precisely specified. The actual apparatus used to measure any mutually commuting subset of an uncolorable finite set of observables will be slightly misaligned at all stages of the measuring process. Therefore the pointer readings from which one deduces their discrete simultaneous values will give slightly unreliable information about the ideal observables one was trying to measure. If the misalignment is at the limit of ones ability to control or discern, as it will be in a well designed experiment, then one can and will label the outcomes of such a procedure with the same discrete eigenvalues used to label the gedanken outcomes of the ideal perfectly aligned measurement. The misalignment will only reveal itself through the occasional occurrence of runs with outcomes that the laws of quantum mechanics prohibit for a perfectly aligned apparatus. But although the outcomes deduced from such imperfect measurements will occasionally differ dramatically from those allowed in the ideal case, if the misalignment is very slight, the statistical distribution of outcomes will differ only slightly from the ideal case.

It is this continuity of quantum mechanical probabilities under small variations in the experimental configuration (without which quantum mechanics, or, for that matter, any other physical theory, would be quite useless) that makes the KS conclusion relevant to the imperfect case. Even though the apparatus cannot be perfectly aligned, if quantum mechanics is correct in its quantitative predictions, then the fraction of runs which violate the quantum-mechanical rules applying to the ideal observables can be made arbitrarily small in the realistic case by making the alignment sufficiently sharp. But the KS theorem tells us that if the possible results of the ideal gedanken measurements were consistent with preexisting noncontextual values, then the fraction of quantum-mechanically forbidden outcomes for the real experiments would have to approach a nonzero limit as the alignment became sharp.

By making the experimental misalignment sufficiently small, one can make the statistics of the slightly unreliable results of the randomly selected realistic measurements arbitrarily close to the statistics of the theoretical results of the randomly selected ideal measurements. Therefore a failure in the realistic case to observe sufficiently many values that contradict the constraints imposed on the data by quantum mechanics can demonstrate, just as effectively as the failure to observe any such contradictions in the ideal case, that if the measurements are revealing preexisting values, then those values must be contextual.

Because it can be stated in terms of outcome probabilities, and because those probabilities must vary continuously with variations in the experimental apparatus, the conclusion of the KS theorem are not “nullified” by the finite precision with which actual measurements can be specified.

But what about Meyer’s and Kent’s intuition that the dense colorable MK set can be used to furnish a group of nearly ideal experiments with noncontextual values that agree with the constraints imposed by quantum mechanics on all mutually commuting ideal subsets? The crucial word here is “all”. It is impossible for a colorable set of observables in one-to-one correspondence with the observables in a KS uncolorable set, to have mutually commuting subsets that correspond to every mutually commuting subset of the KS uncolorable set. At least one of those subsets cannot be mutually commuting.

This impossibility is established by the KS theorem itself, which uses only the topology of the network of links between commuting observables in the full KS uncolorable set. This topology would be preserved by the correspondence between the nearby colorable and uncolorable sets, if the correspondence between their mutually commuting subsets were complete. Because, as Meyer and Kent explicitly show, the MK set is colorable, the correspondence cannot be complete.

Thus any finite MK colorable set in sufficiently close one-to-one correspondence with a finite KS uncolorable set, must necessarily lack the full range of mutually commuting subsets that the KS uncolorable one contains. There is therefore at least one mutually commuting subset of the KS uncolorable set for which the MK colorable set fails to provide a set of values agreeing with the constraints imposed by quantum mechanics. It is only this deficiency that makes it possible to color the observables in the MK set in a noncontextual way that satisfies the quantum mechanical constraints for all mutually commuting subsets. But this same deficiency makes the MK set useless for specifying preassigned noncontextual values agreeing with quantum mechanics for the outcomes of every one of the slightly imperfect experiments that corresponds to measuring a mutually commuting subset of observables from the ideal KS uncolorable set.

If one tries to bridge this gap in the argument by associating more than a single nearby MK colorable observable with some of the observables in the ideal uncolorable set, one sacrifices the noncontextuality of the value assignments. Nor does the MK “nullification” of the KS theorem work in a toy universe in which the physically allowed observables are restricted to be those in the dense colorable set. In such a universe measurements still could not be specified with perfect precision, and one would still have to rely on the continuity of outcome probabilities with small changes in the experimental configuration to relate the theory to actual imperfect observations. Under such conditions it would be highly convenient to introduce fictitious observables which were the limit points of physical observables in the dense colorable set, whose statistics could represent to high accuracy the statistics of physically allowed observables in their immediate vicinity. The KS theorem would hold for these fictitious limit-point observables, and would therefore apply by continuity to measurements of the nearby physical observables, for exactly the reasons I have just described in the case of conventional quantum mechanics with its continuum of observables. Indeed, I can see no grounds other than convenience (which is, of course, so enormous as to be utterly compelling) for treating the whole continuum of observables as physically real, as we actually do, rather than regarding it as a fictitious extension of some countable dense subset of observables.

So contrary to the claim of Meyer and Kent, the KS theorem is not nullified by the finite precision of real experimental setups because of the fundamental physical requirement that probabilities of outcomes of real experiments vary only slightly under slight variations in the configuration of the experimental apparatus, and because the import of the theorem can be stated in terms of whether certain outcomes never occur, or occur a definite nonzero fraction of the time in a set of randomly chosen ideal experiments.

But the elegant MK colorings of dense sets of observables make an instructive contribution to our understanding of the KS theorem, by forcing us to recognize that a principle of continuity of physical probability, obeyed by the quantum theory, plays an essential role in relating the conclusions of the theorem to real experiments. Indeed, the relationship between the MK dense colorable sets and the KS uncolorable set offers a novel perspective on why it is sensible to base physics on real (as opposed to rational) numbers, in spite of the finite precision of actual experimental arrangements.

Acknowledgment. This reexamination of the physical setting of the Kochen-Specker theorem was supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. PHY 9722065.