Quantum contextuality of spin-1 massive particles

Contextuality is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics. Contrary to entanglement, which can only exist in composite systems, contextuality is also present for single entities. The case of a three-level system is of particular interest because—in agreement with the Bell-Kochen-Specker theorem—it is the simplest in which quantum contextuality is necessarily present. We verify that the polarizations of spin-1 massive particles produced at collider experiments indeed exhibit contextuality. To this purpose we consider W gauge bosons produced in top-quark decays, J/ψ and K∗(892)0 mesons created in B-meson decays, and φ mesons resulting from χ0 c charmonium decays, making use of the data collected and analyzed by the ATLAS, LHCb, and BESIII collaborations, respectively. The polarizations of all these four particles show contextuality with a significance of more than 5σ.