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arXiv:2111.13934 · International Journal of Quantum Information

Margenau–Hill operator valued measures and joint measurability

Seeta Vasudevrao, H. S. Karthik, I. Reena, Sudha, A. R. Usha Devi

Published Jul 29, 2022• 0 citations
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Abstract

We employ the Margenau–Hill (MH) correspondence rule for associating classical functions with quantum operators to construct quasi-probability mass functions. Using this we obtain the fuzzy one parameter quasi measurement operator (QMO) characterizing the incompatibility of noncommuting spin observables of qubits, qutrits and 2-qubit systems. Positivity of the fuzzy MH-QMO places upper bounds on the associated unsharpness parameter. This serves as a sufficient condition for measurement incompatibility of spin observables. We assess the amount of unsharpness required for joint measurability (compatibility) of the noncommuting qubit, qutrit and 2-qubit observables. We show that the degree of compatibility of a pair of orthogonal qubit observables agrees perfectly with the necessary and sufficient conditions for joint measurability. Furthermore, we obtain analytical upper bounds on the unsharpness parameter specifying the range of joint measurability of spin components of qutrits and pairs of orthogonal spin observables of a 2-qubit system. Our results indicate that the measurement incompatibility of spin observables increases with Hilbert space dimension.

DOI
10.1142/s021974992250023x

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We employ the Margenau–Hill (MH) correspondence rule for associating classical functions with quantum operators to construct quasi-probability mass functions. Using this we obtain the fuzzy one parameter quasi measurement operator (QMO) characterizing the incompatibility of noncommuting spin observables of qubits, qutrits and 2-qubit systems. Positivity of the fuzzy MH-QMO places upper bounds on the associated unsharpness parameter. This serves as a sufficient condition for measurement incompatibility of spin observables. We assess the amount of unsharpness required for joint measurability (compatibility) of the noncommuting qubit, qutrit and 2-qubit observables. We show that the degree of compatibility of a pair of orthogonal qubit observables agrees perfectly with the necessary and sufficient conditions for joint measurability. Furthermore, we obtain analytical upper bounds on the unsharpness parameter specifying the range of joint measurability of spin components of qutrits and pairs of orthogonal spin observables of a 2-qubit system. Our results indicate that the measurement incompatibility of spin observables increases with Hilbert space dimension.
Measurement incompatibility and the negativity of quasi-probability distributions both demonstrate the signature of nonclassicality. However, their relations largely remained qualitative, and no explicit operational connection has been established. We provide an operational link between measurement incompatibility and the Margenau-Hill(MH) quasi-probability distribution associated with two dichotomic observables. { We first derive the joint measurability (measurement compatibility) condition for any pair of dichotomic observables in arbitrary finite dimension ddd.} We then rigorously prove that for any pair of unsharp dichotomic measurements in dimension ddd, the positivity of the MH distribution is equivalent to joint measurability \emph{i.e.}, the MH distribution is positive \emph{if and only if} the measurements are jointly measurable. We further introduce the MH-like quasi-probability distribution for nnn dichotomic unsharp observables in arbitrary finite dimension and derive a sufficient condition of joint-measurability when the observables are mutually anticommuting. Finally, we propose an interferometric setup, inspired by quantum-switch architectures, that directly reconstructs MH quasi-probability which in turn provides a test of incompatibility.
We obtain a formal characterization of the compatibility or otherwise of a set of positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) via their Naimark extensions. We show that a set of POVMs is jointly measurable if and only if there exists a single Naimark extension, specified by a fixed ancilla state on the same ancilla Hilbert space, that maps them to a set of commuting projective measurements (PVMs). We use our result to obtain an easily checkable sufficient condition for the compatibility of a pair of dichotomic observables in any dimension. This in turn leads to a characterization of the compatibility regions for some important classes of observables including a pair of unsharp qubit observables. Finally, we also outline as to how our result provides an alternate approach to quantifying the incompatibility of a general set of quantum measurements.
Decoherence, when viewed in the Heisenberg picture, can turn incompatible measurements into jointly measurable ones. This provides an observable-level description of emergent classicality in terms of the incompatibility destroyed by a noise channel. The corresponding loss of incompatibility can be captured by the channel's \emph{compatibility region}---the observables in a probe class that become jointly measurable with every noisy observable. The geometry and volume of this region provide a refined operational way to compare noise channels. We apply this framework to decoherence channels, each of which acts by Schur multiplication with extreme points of the convex set of unit-diagonal positive semidefinite matrices. Restricting to extremals eliminates convex mixing and reveals subtle phase-dependent decoherence effects thar are not captured by damping rates or conventional coherence quantifiers. Such channels have a rigid dilation structure described by a rank-one operator frame, which reduces joint measurability to a positivity test, making the compatibility region analytically tractable, and its volume computable from the frame's Gram matrix. If the frame can be normalised to a minimal informationally complete (MIC) POVM, the compatibility region acquires a geometric interpretation in the associated probability representation of the quantum state space, familiar with Qbism. Among maximal-rank extremals, those associated with symmetric informationally complete (SIC) POVMs maximise the compatibility volume and hence destroy the greatest amount of incompatibility, providing an operational characterisation of the special role of SICs in terms of joint measurability. This leads to a new formulation of the well-known SIC existence problem as a joint measurability question for noisy mutually unbiased bases.
A fundamental feature of quantum mechanics is the incompatibility between quantum measurements, which leads to the Heisenberg uncertainty relations and is intrinsically related to detection of many other quantum features such as nonlocality and steering. Given the significance and ubiquity of incompatibility, it is desirable to quantify the degree of incompatibility between two quantum measurements which are mathematically described by positive operator valued measures. The commutator (Lie product) between operators has widely been used in quantifying incompatibility (noncommutativity) and plays a crucial role in quantum mechanics. In contrast, the anticommutator (Jordan product) between operators has been relatively less employed in the study of quantum mechanics. In this work, we explore the role of the Jordan product in characterizing measurement incompatibility. The key observation lies in that while the product of two non-negative classical observables is automatically non-negative, this is not the case for quantum observables. Indeed the Jordan product of two non-negative observables is not necessarily non-negative. This negativity of the Jordan product is a purely quantum phenomenon and is here exploited to quantify a kind of measurement incompatibility, which interpolates between noncommutativity and joint measurability. We reveal basic features of this approach, make some comparisons with existing quantifiers of incompatibility and suggest the issue of investigating its applications and implications in quantum information tasks.
Quasiprobability distributions offer a useful way of describing nonclassical features of quantum systems through their departure from classical probability theory. In this work, we investigate the quantification of nonclassicality associated with the Margenau--Hill quasiprobability (MHQ) distribution using its moments, without requiring reconstruction of the full distribution. First we introduce the logarithmic MHQ negativity as a quantifier of nonclassicality, and then derive a hierarchy of rigorous lower bounds in terms of low-order moments. Within the resulting hierarchy, the fourth-moment bound is the strongest among the bounds based on even moments. For qubits, we further derive a tight upper bound on the exact MHQ negativity and identify the corresponding extremal state. We also obtain an optimal positivity threshold based on the fourth moment for arbitrary pairs of qubit observables. Finally, we show that the relevant moments admit exact multicopy representations, providing a route to their estimation using interferometry or classical shadow techniques. Our results establish a moment-based framework for extracting quantitative information about MHQ negativity from a finite set of low-order observables.
We study when a noisy qubit channel renders all positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) jointly measurable. For every unital qubit channel, we derive the exact incompatibility-breaking criterion and prove that projective measurements already determine the boundary for arbitrary POVMs. Through the steering--joint-measurability correspondence, this result gives the exact POVM-steering boundary for all two-qubit states with maximally mixed marginals, with the Werner states recovered as a special case. For nonunital qubit channels, we construct a generally asymmetric parent POVM and obtain an explicit sufficient incompatibility-breaking condition, which in turn yields a sufficient unsteerability criterion for arbitrary two-qubit states.