An Extension of Gleason's Theorem for Quantum Computation

Abstract

We develop a synthesis of Turing's paradigm of computation and von Neumann's quantum logic to serve as a model for quantum computation with recursion, such that potentially non-terminating computation can take place, as in a quantum Turing machine. This model is based on the extension of von Neumann's quantum logic to partial states, defined here as sub-probability measures on the Hilbert space, equipped with the natural pointwise partial ordering. The sub-probability measures allow a certain probability for the non-termination of the computation. We then derive an extension of Gleason's theorem and show that, for Hilbert spaces of dimension greater than two, the partial order of sub-probability measures is order isomorphic with the collection of partial density operators, i.e., trace class positive operators with trace between zero and one, equipped with the usual partial ordering induced from positive operators. We show that the expected value of a bounded observable with respect to a partial state can be defined as a closed bounded interval, which extends the classical definition of expected value.