A necessary condition for incompatibility of observables in general probabilistic theories

Abstract

We quantify the intrinsic noise content of an observable in a general probabilistic theory and derive a noise content inequality for incompatible observables. We apply the derived inequality to standard quantum theory, the quantum theory of processes, and polytope state spaces. The noise content for positive operator-valued measures takes a particularly simple form and equals the sum of minimal eigenvalues of all the effects. We illustrate our findings with a number of examples including the introduced notion of reverse observables.

Minor corrections in v2

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Conditions for the compatibility of channels in general probabilistic theory and their connection to steering and Bell nonlocality
• Information transfer in generalized probabilistic theories based on weak repeatability