English

Plausibility measures on test spaces

Quantum Physics 2015-05-07 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

Plausibility measures are structures for reasoning in the face of uncertainty that generalize probabilities, unifying them with weaker structures like possibility measures and comparative probability relations. So far, the theory of plausibility measures has only been developed for classical sample spaces. In this paper, we generalize the theory to test spaces, so that they can be applied to general operational theories, and to quantum theory in particular. Our main results are two theorems on when a plausibility measure agrees with a probability measure, i.e. when its comparative relations coincide with those of a probability measure. For strictly finite test spaces we obtain a precise analogue of the classical result that the Archimedean condition is necessary and sufficient for agreement between a plausibility and a probability measure. In the locally finite case, we prove a slightly weaker result that the Archimedean condition implies almost agreement.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1505.01151,
  title  = {Plausibility measures on test spaces},
  author = {Tobias Fritz and Matthew Leifer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.01151},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

LaTeX, 12 pages, requires eptcs.cls and eptcs.bst, submitted to Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL) 2015

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:28:40.660Z