[2603.26692] Degrees, Levels, and Profiles of Contextuality

Quantum Physics arXiv:2603.26692 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 16 Mar 2026] Title:Degrees, Levels, and Profiles of Contextuality Authors:Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov, Victor H. Cervantes View a PDF of the paper titled Degrees, Levels, and Profiles of Contextuality, by Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov and Victor H. Cervantes View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We introduce a new notion, that of a contextuality profile of a system. Rather than characterizing a system's contextuality by a single number, its overall degree of contextuality, we show how it can be characterized by a curve relating degree of contextuality to level at which the system is considered,\begin{array}{c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c} \textnormal{level} & 1 & \cdots & n-1 & n>1 & n+1 & \cdots & N\\ \hline \textnormal{degree} & 0 & \cdots & 0 & d_{n}>0 & d_{n+1}\geq d_{n} & \cdots & d_{N}\geq d_{N-1} \end{array},where N is the maximum number of variables per system's context. A system is represented at level n if one only considers the joint distributions with k\leq n variables, ignoring higher-order joint distributions. We show that the level-wise contextuality analysis can be used in conjunction with any well-constructed measure of contextuality. We present a method of concatenated systems to explore contextuality profiles systematically, and we apply it to the contextuality profiles for three major measures of contextuality proposed in the literature. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Probabili...