Coexistence of qubit observables

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:11010108,
            doi = {10.48660/11010108},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/11010108},
            author = {Reitzner, Daniel},
            keywords = {Quantum Foundations},
            language = {en},
            title = {Coexistence of qubit observables},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2011},
            month = {jan},
            note = {PIRSA:11010108 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }
          

Abstract

Quantum mechanics does not allow us to measure all possible combinations of observables on one system. Even in the simplest case of two observables we know, that measuring one of the observables changes the system in such way, that the other measurement will not give us desired precise information about the state of the system. Prominent examples of such observables are measurement of position and momentum of a particle, or measuring spin along two orthogonal directions. However, once we accept the possibility of imprecise measurements, we can consider to perform such measurement within one experiment. This is the basis of the notion of coexistence. I will present the basics of coexistence by showing how to perform the spin measurement in two directions, while considering the imprecision of the measurement described by POVMs. We can also go a little further and consider coexistence of instruments, i.e. measurements, where on the output besides classical information we are also left out with quantum post-measurement state.