Coexistence of quantum operations

Teiko Heinosaari, Daniel Reitzner, Peter Stano, Mario Ziman

Published 2009-05-29, updated 2009-08-21Version 2

Quantum operations are used to describe the observed probability distributions and conditional states of the measured system. In this paper, we address the problem of their joint measurability (coexistence). We derive two equivalent coexistence criteria. The two most common classes of operations - Luders operations and conditional state preparators - are analyzed. It is shown that Luders operations are coexistent only under very restrictive conditions, when the associated effects are either proportional to each other, or disjoint.