English

Quantum-mechanical measurement apparatus as a black box

Quantum Physics 2014-02-13 v1

Abstract

It is commonly believed that the most general type of a quantum-mechanical measurement is one described by a positive-operator valued measure (POVM). In the present paper, this statement is proven for any measurements on quantum systems with a finite-dimensional state space. The proof of POVM nature of an arbitrary measurement is carried out using a purely operational approach, which is fully ignorant about what is inside a measurement apparatus. The suggested approach gives also an opportunity to derive the Born rule.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.2919,
  title  = {Quantum-mechanical measurement apparatus as a black box},
  author = {A. V. Nenashev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.2919},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

11 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T03:07:01.841Z