Critical noncolorings of the 600-cell proving the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem

DOI10.1088/1751-8113/43/10/105304MaRDI QIDQ3549979zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Mordecai Waegell, P. K. Aravind

Publication date 30 March 2010

Published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0911.2289

zbMATH Keywords

combinatorial choice problemsgeometry and topologygroups and algebras in quantum theoryHilbert and pre-Hilbert spacespermutationsrepresentativesspaces with semidefinite inner productsubsets

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Permutations, words, matrices (05A05) Hilbert and pre-Hilbert spaces: geometry and topology (including spaces with semidefinite inner product) (46C05) Contextuality in quantum theory (81P13)

Abstract: Aravind and Lee-Elkin (1997) gave a proof of the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem by showing that it is impossible to color the 60 directions from the center of a 600-cell to its vertices in a certain way. This paper refines that result by showing that the 60 directions contain many subsets of 36 and 30 directions that cannot be similarly colored, and so provide more economical demonstrations of the theorem. Further, these subsets are shown to be critical in the sense that deleting even a single direction from any of them causes the proof to fail. The critical sets of size 36 and 30 are shown to belong to orbits of 200 and 240 members, respectively, under the symmetries of the polytope. A comparison is made between these critical sets and other such sets in four dimensions, and the significance of these results is discussed.

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Cited in

(6)

• Orthomodular Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem
• Parity proofs of the Kochen–Specker theorem based on 60 complex rays in four dimensions
• Two noncolourable configurations in four dimensions illustrating the Kochen-Specker theorem
• New class of 4-dim Kochen-Specker sets
• Parity proofs of the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem based on the 600-cell
• Probabilistic generation of quantum contextual sets

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