Operational meanings of a generalized conditional expectation in quantum metrology

Abstract

A unifying formalism of generalized conditional expectations (GCEs) for quantum mechanics has recently emerged, but its physical implications regarding the retrodiction of a quantum observable remain controversial. To address the controversy, here I offer operational meanings for a version of the GCEs in the context of quantum parameter estimation. When a quantum sensor is corrupted by decoherence, the GCE is found to relate the operator-valued optimal estimators before and after the decoherence. Furthermore, the error increase, or regret, caused by the decoherence is shown to be equal to a divergence between the two estimators. The real weak value as a special case of the GCE plays the same role in suboptimal estimation – its divergence from the optimal estimator is precisely the regret for not using the optimal measurement. For an application of the GCE, I show that it enables the use of dynamic programming for designing a controller that minimizes the estimation error. For the frequentist setting, I show that the GCE leads to a quantum Rao-Blackwell theorem, which offers significant implications for quantum metrology and thermal-light sensing in particular. These results give the GCE and the associated divergence a natural, useful, and incontrovertible role in quantum decision and control theory.