2 - States and effects

Summary

One of the main purposes of a physical theory is to describe and predict events observed in physical experiments. In this chapter we introduce the key physical concepts used in the description of quantum experiments and present their mathematical formalization as Hilbert space operators.

Duality of states and effects

Fundamental in quantum theory is the concept of a state, which is usually understood as a description of an ensemble of similarly prepared systems. An effect, on the other hand, is a measurement apparatus that produces either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as an outcome. The concept of an effect was coined by Ludwig [96] and made popular by Kraus [89]. The duality of states and effects means, essentially, that when a state and an effect are specified we can calculate a probability distribution. This can be compared with the outcomes of real experiments, and it gives a physical meaning to the mathematical Hilbert space machinery.

Basic statistical framework

A basic situation in physics is the following: we have an object system under investigation, and we are trying to learn something about it by doing an experiment. As a result, a measurement outcome is registered. A statistical theory, such as quantum theory, does not in general predict which individual outcomes will occur in any particular measurement; it merely predicts their probabilities of occurrence. Hence, we take the output of an experiment (which consists of many measurement runs) to be a probability distribution on a set Ω of the possible measurement outcomes.