Uniqueness of the joint measurement and the structure of the set of compatible quantum measurements

Abstract

We address the problem of characterising the compatible tuples of measurements that admit a unique joint measurement. We derive a uniqueness criterion based on the method of perturbations and apply it to show that extremal points of the set of compatible tuples admit a unique joint measurement, while all tuples that admit a unique joint measurement lie in the boundary of such a set. We also provide counter-examples showing that none of these properties are both necessary and sufficient, thus completely describing the relation between joint measurement uniqueness and the structure of the compatible set. As a by-product of our investigations, we completely characterise the extremal and boundary points of the set of general tuples of measurements and of the subset of compatible tuples.