Conditioned Observables in Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

This paper presents some of the basic properties of conditioned observables in finite-dimensional quantum mechanics. We begin by defining the sequential product of quantum effects and use this to define the sequential product of two observables. The sequential product is then employed to construct the conditioned observable relative to another observable. We then show that conditioning preserves mixtures and post-process of observables. We consider conditioning among three observables and a complement of an observable. Corresponding to an observable, we define an observable operator in a natural way and show that this mapping also preserves mixtures and post-processing. Finally, we present a method of defining conditioning in terms of self-adjoint operators instead of observables. Although this technique is related to our previous method it is not equivalent.