Lower and Upper Conditioning in Quantum Bayesian Theory

Bart Jacobs
(Radboud University)

Updating a probability distribution in the light of new evidence is a very basic operation in Bayesian probability theory. It is also known as state revision or simply as conditioning. This paper recalls how locally updating a joint state can equivalently be described via inference using the channel extracted from the state (via disintegration). This paper also investigates the quantum analogues of conditioning, and in particular the analogues of this equivalence between updating a joint state and inference. The main finding is that in order to obtain a similar equivalence, we have to distinguish two forms of quantum conditioning, which we call lower and upper conditioning. They are known from the literature, but the common framework in which we describe them and the equivalence result are new.

In Peter Selinger and Giulio Chiribella: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL 2018), Halifax, Canada, 3-7th June 2018, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 287, pp. 225–238.
Published: 31st January 2019.

ArXived at: https://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.287.13 bibtex PDF
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