English

Properties of QBist State Spaces

Quantum Physics 2011-02-14 v3

Abstract

Every quantum state can be represented as a probability distribution over the outcomes of an informationally complete measurement. But not all probability distributions correspond to quantum states. Quantum state space may thus be thought of as a restricted subset of all potentially available probabilities. A recent publication [1] advocates such a representation using symmetric informationally complete (SIC) measurements. Building upon this work we study how this subset--quantum-state space--might be characterized. Our leading characteristic is that the inner products of the probabilities are bounded, a simple condition with nontrivial consequences. To get quantum-state space something more detailed about the extreme points is needed. No definitive characterization is reached, but we see several new interesting features over those in [1], and all in conformity with quantum theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0910.2750,
  title  = {Properties of QBist State Spaces},
  author = {D. M. Appleby and Asa Ericsson and Christopher A. Fuchs},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0910.2750},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

17 pages, 5 figures, a few additions in v2 on QBism ideas