Retrodiction of generalized measurement outcomes

Abstract

If a generalized measurement is performed on a quantum system and we do not know the outcome, are we able to retrodict it with a second measurement? We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for perfect retrodiction of the outcome of a known generalized measurement, given the final state, for an arbitrary initial state. From this, we deduce that, when the input and output Hilbert spaces have equal (finite) dimension, it is impossible to perfectly retrodict the outcome of any fine-grained measurement [where each positive, operator-valued measure (POVM) element corresponds to a single Kraus operator] for all initial states unless the measurement is unitarily equivalent to a projective measurement. It also enables us to show that every POVM can be realized in such a way that perfect outcome retrodiction is possible for an arbitrary initial state when the number of outcomes does not exceed the output Hilbert space dimension. We then consider the situation where the initial state is not arbitrary, though it may be entangled, and describe the conditions under which unambiguous outcome retrodiction is possible for a fine-grained generalized measurement. We find that this is possible for some state if the Kraus operators are linearly independent. This condition is also necessary when the Kraus operators are nonsingular. From this, we deduce that every trace-preserving quantum operation is associated with a generalized measurement whose outcome is unambiguously retrodictable for some initial state, and also that a set of unitary operators can be unambiguously discriminated iff they are linearly independent. We then examine the issue of unambiguous outcome retrodiction without entanglement. This has important connections with the theory of locally linearly dependent and locally linearly independent operators.