Correspondence between quantum and classical information: Generalized quantum measurements

Abstract

The concept of generalized quantum measurement is introduced as a transformation that sets a one-to-one correspondence between the initial states of the measured object system and final states of the object-meter system with the help of a classical informational index, unambiguously linked to a classically compatible set of quantum states. It is shown that the generalized quantum measurement concept covers all key types of quantum measurement---standard projective, entangling, fuzzy, and generalized measurements with a partial or complete destruction of initial information associated with the object. A special class of soft quantum measurements as a basic model for the fuzzy measurements widespread in physics is introduced and its information properties are studied in detail. Also, a special class of partially destructive measurements mapping all states of the Hilbert space of a finite-dimensional quantum system onto the basis states of an infinite-dimensional quantum system is considered.