Lower and Upper Conditioning in Quantum Bayesian Theory

TL;DR

This paper explores quantum analogues of Bayesian conditioning, introducing and formalizing two forms of quantum conditioning—lower and upper—that extend classical state updating concepts.

Contribution

It establishes a unified framework for quantum conditioning, demonstrating the equivalence between state updating and inference in the quantum context, which was not previously formalized.

Findings

Identifies two forms of quantum conditioning: lower and upper.

Establishes the equivalence between state update and inference for these forms.

Provides a new framework unifying classical and quantum conditioning concepts.

Abstract

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.