English

Unsharp measurements, joint measurability and classical distributions for some qudits

Quantum Physics 2020-04-14 v1

Abstract

Classicality associated with joint measurability of operators manifests through a valid classical joint probability distribution on measurement outcomes. For qudits in dimension nn, where nn is prime or power of prime, we present a method to construct unsharp versions of projective measurement operators which results in a geometric description of the set of quantum states for which the operators engender a classical joint probability distribution, and are jointly measurable. Specifically, within the setting of a generalised Bloch sphere in n21n^2-1 dimensions, we establish that the constructed operators are jointly measurable for states given by a family of concentric spheres inscribed within a regular polyhedron, which represents states that lead to classical probability distributions. Our construction establishes a novel perspective on links between joint measurability and optimal measurement strategies associated with Mutually Unbiased Bases (MUBs), and formulates a necessary condition for the long-standing open problem of existence of MUBs in dimension n=6n=6.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.05547,
  title  = {Unsharp measurements, joint measurability and classical distributions for some qudits},
  author = {H S Smitha Rao and Swarnamala Sirsi and Karthik Bharath},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.05547},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:48:21.933Z