We study the existence of jointly measurable POVM approximations to two non-commuting sharp spin observables. We compare two different ways to specify optimal approximations.
In order to analyze joint measurability of given measurements, we introduce a Hermitian operator-valued measure, called $W$-measure, such that it has marginals of positive operator-valued measures (POVMs). We prove that ${W}$-measure is a POVM {\em if and only if} its marginal POVMs are jointly measurable. The proof suggests to employ the negatives of ${W}$-measure as an indicator for non-joint measurability. By applying triangle inequalities to the negativity, we derive joint measurability criteria for dichotomic and trichotomic variables. Also, we propose an operational test for the joint me…
The purpose of this note is to clarify the logical relationship between joint measurability and contextuality for quantum observables in view of recent developments [1-4].
Joint measurability of sharp quantum observables is determined pairwise, and so can be captured in a graph. We prove the converse: any graph, whose vertices represent sharp observables, and whose edges represent joint measurability, is realised by quantum theory. This leads us to show that it is not always possible to use Neumark dilation to turn unsharp observables into sharp ones with the same joint measurability relations, highlighting a caveat in the church of the larger Hilbert space".
This talk is a survey of the question of joint measurability of coexistent observables and its is based on the monograph Operational Quantum Physics [1] and on the papers [2,3,4].
Measurements in quantum theory exhibit incompatibility, i.e., they can fail to be jointly measurable. An intuitive way to represent the (in)compatibility relations among a set of measurements is via a hypergraph representing their joint measurability structure: its vertices represent measurements and its hyperedges represent (all and only) subsets of compatible measurements. Projective measurements in quantum theory realize (all and only) joint measurability structures that are graphs. On the other hand, general measurements represented by positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) can realize …
The fact that not all measurements can be carried out simultaneously is a peculiar feature of quantum mechanics and responsible for many key phenomena in the theory, such as complementarity or uncertainty relations. For the special case of projective measurements quantum behavior can be characterized by the commutator but for generalized measurements it is not easy to decide whether two measurements can still be understood in classical terms or whether they show already quantum features. We prove that generalized measurements which do not fulfill the notion of joint measurability are nonclassi…
We use Naimark's dilation theorem in order to characterize the joint measurability of two POVMs. Then, we analyze the joint measurability of two commutative POVMs $F_1$ and $F_2$ which are the smearing of two self-adjoint operators $A_1$ and $A_2$ respectively. We prove that the compatibility of $F_1$ and $F_2$ is connected to the existence of two compatible self-adjoint dilations $A_1^+$ and $A_2^+$ of $A_1$ and $A_2$ respectively. As a corollary we prove that each couple of self-adjoint operators can be dilated to a couple of compatible self-adjoint operators. Next, we analyze the joint meas…
Two quantities quantifying uncertainty relations are examined. In J.Math.Phys. 48, 082103 (2007), Busch and Pearson investigated the limitation on joint localizability and joint measurement of position and momentum by introducing overall width and error bar width. In this paper, we show a simple relationship between these quantities for finite-dimensional systems. Our result indicates that if there is a bound on joint localizability, it is possible to obtain a similar bound on joint measurability. For finite-dimensional systems, uncertainty relations for a pair of general projection-valued mea…
Quantum steering refers to the possibility for Alice to remotely steer Bob's state by performing local measurements on her half of a bipartite system. Two necessary ingredients for steering are entanglement and incompatibility of Alice's measurements. In particular, it has been recently proven that for the case of pure states of maximal Schmidt rank the problem of steerability for Bob's assemblage is equivalent to the problem of joint measurability for Alice's observables. We show that such an equivalence holds in general, namely, the steerability of any assemblage can always be formulated as …
For sharp quantum observables the following facts hold: (i) if we have a collection of sharp observables and each pair of them is jointly measurable, then they are jointly measurable all together; (ii) if two sharp observables are jointly measurable, then their joint observable is unique and it gives the greatest lower bound for the effects corresponding to the observables; (iii) if we have two sharp observables and their every possible two outcome partitionings are jointly measurable, then the observables themselves are jointly measurable. We show that, in general, these properties do not hol…
One of the hallmarks of quantum theory is the realization that distinct measurements cannot in general be performed simultaneously, in stark contrast to classical physics. In this context the notions of coexistence and joint measurability are employed to analyze the possibility of measuring together two general quantum observables, characterizing different degrees of compatibility between measurements. It is known that two jointly measurable observables are always coexistent, and that the converse holds for various classes of observables, including the case of observables with two outcomes. He…
Classicality associated with joint measurability of operators manifests through a valid classical joint probability distribution on measurement outcomes. For qudits in dimension $n$, where $n$ is prime or power of prime, we present a method to construct unsharp versions of projective measurement operators which results in a geometric description of the set of quantum states for which the operators engender a classical joint probability distribution, and are jointly measurable. Specifically, within the setting of a generalised Bloch sphere in $n^2-1$ dimensions, we establish that the constructe…
Quintino et. al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 160402 (2014)) and Uola et. al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 160403 (2014)) have recently established an intrinsic relation between non-joint measurability and Einstein-Podolsky- Rosen steering. They showed that a set of measurements is incompatible (i.e., not jointly measurable) if and only if it can be used for the demonstration of steering. In this paper, we prove the temporal analog of this result viz., a set of measurements are incompatible if and only if it exhibits temporal steering.
Occupying a position between entanglement and Bell nonlocality, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Many criteria have been proposed and experimentally implemented to characterize EPR-steering. Nevertheless, only a few results are available to quantify steerability using analytical results. In this work, we propose a method for quantifying the steerability in two-qubit quantum states in the two-setting EPR-steering scenario, using the connection between joint measurability and steerability. We derive an analytical formula for the steerabil…
The fundamental principles of complementarity and uncertainty are shown to be related to the possibility of joint unsharp measurements of pairs of noncommuting quantum observables. A new joint measurement scheme for complementary observables is proposed. The measured observables are represented as positive operator valued measures (POVMs), whose intrinsic fuzziness parameters are found to satisfy an intriguing pay-off relation reflecting the complementarity. At the same time, this relation represents an instance of a Heisenberg uncertainty relation for measurement imprecisions. A model-indepen…
We give an overview of joint unsharp measurements of non-commuting observables using positive operator valued measures (POVMs). We exemplify the role played by joint measurability of POVMs in entropic uncertainty relation for Alice's pair of non-commuting observables in the presence of Bob's entangled quantum memory. We show that Bob should record the outcomes of incompatible (non-jointly measurable) POVMs in his quantum memory so as to beat the entropic uncertainty bound. In other words, in addition to the presence of entangled Alice-Bob state, implementing incompatible POVMs at Bob's end is …
We show how to construct loss-tolerant linear steering inequalities using a generic set of von Neumann measurements that are violated by $d$-dimensional states, and that rely only upon a simple property of the set of measurements used (the maximal overlap between measurement directions). Using these inequalities we show that the critical detection efficiency above which $n$ von Neumann measurements can demonstrate steering is $1/n$. We show furthermore that using our construction and high dimensional states allows for steering demonstrations which are also highly robust to depolarising noise a…
The notion of incompatibility of measurements in quantum theory is in stark contrast with the corresponding classical perspective, where all physical observables are jointly measurable. It is of interest to examine if the results of two or more measurements in the quantum scenario can be perceived from a classical point of view or they still exhibit non-classical features. Clearly, commuting observables can be measured jointly using projective measurements and their statistical outcomes can be discerned classically. However, such simple minded association of compatibility of measurements with …
In the standard quantum theory, one can measure precisely only a subset of the incompatible observables. It results in lack of a formal joint probability defining objective realism even if we accept nonlocal or certain faster-than-light interactions. We propose a construction of such realism extending the usual single-copy description to many copies, partially analogous to familiar many worlds. Failure of the standard single copy can be easily looked for experimentally. The copies should interact weakly at the macroscopic level, leading to effective collapse to a single identical pointer state…
In this Letter we investigate the concept of quantum work and its measurability from the viewpoint of quantum measurement theory. Very often, quantum work and fluctuation theorems are discussed in the framework of projective two-point measurement (TPM) schemes. According to a well known no-go theorem, there is no work observable which satisfies both (i) an average work condition and (ii) the TPM statistics for diagonal input states. Such projective measurements represent a restrictive class among all possible measurements. It is desirable, both from a theoretical and experimental point of view…
Measurement incompatibility is a distinguishing property of quantum physics and an essential resource for many quantum information processing tasks. We introduce an approach to verify the joint measurability of measurements based on phase-space quasiprobability distributions. Our results therefore establish a connection between two notions of non-classicality, namely the negativity of quasiprobability distributions and measurement incompatibility. We show how our approach can be applied to the study of incompatibility-breaking channels and derive incompatibility-breaking sufficient conditions …
Quantum mechanics predicts the joint probability distributions of the outcomes of simultaneous measurements of commuting observables, but the current formulation lacks the operational definition of simultaneous measurements. In order to provide foundations of joint statistics of local general measurements on entangled systems in a general theoretical framework, the question is answered as to under what condition the outputs of two measuring apparatuses satisfy the joint probability formula for simultaneous measurements of their observables. For this purpose, all the possible state changes caus…
Chained correlation inequalities involving pairwise correlations of qubit observables in the equatorial plane are constructed based on the positivity of a sequence of moment matrices. When a jointly measurable set of fuzzy POVMs is employed in first measurement of every pair of sequential measurements, the chained pairwise correlations do not violate the classical bound imposed by the moment matrix positivity. We identify that incompatibility of measurements is only necessary, but not sufficient, in general, for the violation of the inequality. On the other hand, there exists a one-to-one equi…
We show that a rank-1 quantum observable (POVM) M is jointly measurable with a quantum observable M' exactly when M' is a smearing of M. If M is extreme, rank-1 and discrete then M and M' are coexistent if and only if they are jointly measurable.
Recently a problem concerning the equivalence of joint measurability and coexistence of quantum observables was solved [15]. In this paper we generalize two known joint measurability results from sharp observables to the class of extreme observables and study relationships between coexistence, joint measurability, and post-processing of quantum observables when an extreme observable is involved. We also discuss another notion of compatibility and provide a counterexample separating this from the former notions.
We derive new Heisenberg-type uncertainty relations for both joint measurability and the error-disturbance tradeoff for arbitrary observables of finite-dimensional systems. The relations are formulated in terms of a directly operational quantity, namely the probability of distinguishing the actual operation of a device from its hypothetical ideal, by any possible testing procedure whatsoever. Moreover, they may be directly applied in information processing settings, for example to infer that devices which can faithfully transmit information regarding one observable do not leak any information …
In many a traditional physics textbook, a quantum measurement is defined as a projective measurement represented by a Hermitian operator. In quantum information theory, however, the concept of a measurement is dealt with in complete generality and we are therefore forced to confront the more general notion of positive-operator valued measures (POVMs) which suffice to describe all measurements that can be implemented in quantum experiments. We study the (in)compatibility of such POVMs and show that quantum theory realizes all possible (in)compatibility relations among sets of POVMs. This is in …
In this work, we investigate the joint measurability of quantum effects and connect it to the study of free spectrahedra. Free spectrahedra typically arise as matricial relaxations of linear matrix inequalities. An example of a free spectrahedron is the matrix diamond, which is a matricial relaxation of the $\ell_1$-ball. We find that joint measurability of binary POVMs is equivalent to the inclusion of the matrix diamond into the free spectrahedron defined by the effects under study. This connection allows us to use results about inclusion constants from free spectrahedra to quantify the degr…
We introduce a framework for simulating quantum measurements based on classical processing of a set of accessible measurements. Well-known concepts such as joint measurability and projective simulability naturally emerge as particular cases of our framework, but our study also leads to novel results and questions. First, a generalisation of joint measurability is derived, which yields a hierarchy for the incompatibility of sets of measurements. A similar hierarchy is defined based on the number of outcomes used to perform the simulation of a given measurement. This general approach also allows…
For any pair of bounded observables $A$ and $B$ with pure point spectra, we construct an associated "joint observable" which gives rise to a notion of a joint (projective) measurement of $A$ and $B$, and which conforms to the intuition that one can measure non-commuting observables simultaneously, provided one is willing to give up arbitrary precision. As an application, we show how our notion of a joint observable naturally allows for a construction of a "functional calculus," so that for any pair of observables $A$ and $B$ as above, and any (Borel measurable) function $f: \mathbb{R}^2 \right…
Three notions of complementarity - operational, probabilistic, and value complementarity - are reanalysed with respect to the question of joint measurements and compared with reference to some examples of canonically conjugate observables. It is shown that the joint measurability of noncommuting observables is a consequence of the quantum formalism if unsharp observables are taken into account; a fact not in conflict with the idea of complementarity, which, in its strongest version, was originally formulated only for sharp observables. As an illustration of the general theory, the wave-particl…
Ernst Specker considered a particular feature of quantum theory to be especially fundamental, namely that pairwise joint measurability of sharp measurements implies their global joint measurability (https://vimeo.com/52923835). To date, Specker's principle seemed incapable of singling out quantum theory from the space of all general probabilistic theories. In particular, its well-known consequence for experimental statistics, the principle of consistent exclusivity, does not rule out the set of correlations known as almost quantum, which is strictly larger than the set of quantum correlations.…
Whereas complementarity manifests itself via two incompatible observables, quantum contextuality can only be revealed via the joint measurements among at least three observables. By incorporating unsharp measurements and joint measurements into a realistic model, we reestablish an inequality due to Liang, Spekkens, and Wiseman rigorously based on the assumption of noncontextuality alone. Its violation therefore unambiguously pinpoints the quantum contextuality of a two-level system. The maximal violation is attained by three triplewise jointly measurable observables that are pairwise jointly m…
Joint measurements of qubit observables have recently been studied in conjunction with quantum information processing tasks such as cloning. Considerations of such joint measurements have until now been restricted to a certain class of observables that can be characterized by a form of covariance. Here we investigate conditions for the joint measurability of arbitrary pairs of qubit observables. For pairs of noncommuting sharp qubit observables, a notion of approximate joint measurement is introduced. Optimal approximate joint measurements are shown to lie in the class of covariant joint measu…
The existence of maximally incompatible quantum observables in the sense of a minimal joint measurability region is investigated. Employing the universal quantum cloning device it is argued that only infinite dimensional quantum systems can accommodate maximal incompatibility. It is then shown that two of the most common pairs of complementary observables (position and momentum; number and phase) are maximally incompatible.
Quantum Incompatibility in Parallel vs Antiparallel Spins
S. N. Bose National Center for Basic Sciences(S.N. 玻色基础科学国家中心);HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research(匈牙利研究与教育网络核物理研究所);Balagarh Bijoy Krishna Mahavidyalaya(巴拉加尔比约伊克里希纳学院);Indian Statistical Institute(印度统计研究所)
Some measurements in quantum mechanics disturb each other. This has puzzled physicists since the formulation of the theory, but only in recent decades has the incompatibility of measurements been analyzed in depth and detail, using the notion of joint measurability of generalized measurements. In this Colloquium joint measurability and incompatibility are reviewed from the perspective of quantum information science. The Colloquium starts by discussing the basic definitions and concepts. An overview on applications of incompatibility, such as in measurement uncertainty relations, the characteri…
The recently established universal uncertainty principle revealed that two nowhere commuting observables can be measured simultaneously in some state, whereas they have no joint probability distribution in any state. Thus, one measuring apparatus can simultaneously measure two observables that have no simultaneous reality. In order to reconcile this discrepancy, an approach based on quantum logic is proposed to establish the relation between quantum reality and measurement. We provide a language speaking of values of observables independent of measurement based on quantum logic and we construc…
Here we focus on the measurement induced nonlocality and present a redefinition in terms of the skew information subject to a broken observable. It is shown that the obtained quantity possesses an obvious operational meaning, can tackle the noncontractivity of the measurement induced nonlocality and has analytic expressions for many quantum states. Most importantly, an inverse approximate joint diagonalization algorithm, due to its simplicity, high efficiency, stability, and state independence, is presented to provide almost analytic expressions for any quantum state, which can also shed light…
We show that there exist informationally incomplete phase space observables such that the Cartesian margins are informationally equivalent with position and momentum. This shows that it is possible to reconstruct the position and momentum distributions of a quantum system from the statistics of a single observable, and thus a single measurement, even though the state of the system is not uniquely determined by the statistics.
We consider joint measurement of two and three unsharp qubit observables through an Arthur-Kelly type joint measurement model for qubits. We investigate the effect of initial state of the detectors on the unsharpness of the measurement as well as the post-measurement state of the system. Particular emphasis is given on a physical understanding of the POVM to PVM transition in the model and entanglement between system and detectors.Two approaches for characterizing the unsharpness of the measurement and the resulting measurement uncertainty relations are considered.The corresponding measures of…
The quantification of the "measurement uncertainty" aspect of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle---that is, the study of trade-offs between accuracy and disturbance, or between accuracies in an approximate joint measurement on two incompatible observables---has regained a lot of interest recently. Several approaches have been proposed and debated. In this paper we consider Ozawa's definitions for inaccuracies (as root-mean-square errors) in approximate joint measurements, and study how these are constrained in different cases, whether one specifies certain properties of the approximations---na…
In recent years, novel quantifications of measurement error in quantum mechanics have for the first time enabled precise formulations of Heisenberg's famous but often challenged measurement uncertainty relation. These relations take the form of a trade-off for the necessary errors in joint approximate measurements of position and momentum and other incompatible pairs of observables. Here we review some of these error measures, examine their properties and suitability, and compare their relative strengths as criteria for "good" approximations.
We formulate entropic measurements uncertainty relations (MURs) for a spin-1/2 system. When incompatible observables are approximatively jointly measured, we use relative entropy to quantify the information lost in approximation and we prove positive lower bounds for such a loss: there is an unavoidable information loss. Firstly we allow only for covariant approximate joint measurements and we find state-dependent MURs for two or three orthogonal spin-1/2 components. Secondly we consider any possible approximate joint measurement and we find state-independent MURs for two or three spin-1/2 com…