Quantifying measurement incompatibility via measurement disturbance

Abstract

The incompatibility between quantum measurements (as mathematically represented by positive operator-valued measures, i.e., POVMs) is a key feature of quantum mechanics and is intrinsically related to the noncommutativity of operators. For both theoretical and practical considerations, it is desirable to quantify the degree of incompatibility between quantum measurements, and considerable effort has been devoted to this issue. In this paper, we provide a novel approach to measurement incompatibility by exploiting the Lüders channels derived from POVMs and employing the measurement disturbance to quantify incompatibility. This is achieved by constructing an approximately joint measurement for a pair of POVMs, which is an enlarged POVM with the correct marginal property for one of the two POVMs but not necessarily for the other. The degree of failure of the marginal property for the other POVM is a kind of measurement disturbance and can be naturally interpreted as a quantifier of the incompatibility between the two POVMs. We reveal basic properties of this quantifier of measurement incompatibility, identify its maximal value in some cases, compare it with several popular measures in the literature, and illustrate it with some typical examples. Some related open issues are also discussed.