Maximum information measurement for qubit states

Abstract

We determine the optimal measurement that maximizes the average information gain about the state of a qubit system. The qubit is prepared in one of two known states with known prior probabilities. To treat the problem analytically we employ the formalism developed for the maximum confidence quantum state discrimination strategy and obtain the POVM which optimizes the information gain for the entire parameter space of the system. We show that the optimal measurement coincides exactly with the minimum-error quantum measurement only for two pure states, or when the two states have the same Bloch radius or they are on the same diagonal of the Bloch disk.