Information Theoretic Significance of Projective Measurements

Abstract

Projective measurements in quantum theory have a very simple algebraic definition, but their information theoretic significance is quite elusive. Here we introduce a simple order relation based on the concentration of Fisher information, which complements the familiar data-processing order. Under this order relation, the information theoretic significance of projective measurements stands out immediately. Notably, projective measurements are exactly those quantum measurements whose extracted Fisher information is as concentrated as possible, which we call Fisher-sharp measurements. We also introduce the concept of sharpness index and show that it is completely determined by the finest projective measurement among the coarse graining of a given measurement.