Quantum histories without contrary inferences

TL;DR

This paper presents a new formalism for quantum histories that avoids the problem of contrary inferences present in the consistent histories approach, offering a more consistent way to retrodict properties.

Contribution

The authors introduce a formalism of generalized contexts for quantum histories that eliminates contrary inferences, improving the consistency of quantum retrodiction.

Findings

Contrary inferences are avoided in the new formalism.

The formalism provides a consistent way to retrodict properties.

It improves upon the consistent histories approach.

Abstract

In the consistent histories formulation of quantum theory it was shown that it is possible to retrodict contrary properties. We show that this problem do not appear in our formalism of generalized contexts for quantum histories.