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Phys. Rev. A 63, 022113 (2001) [10 pages]

Conceptual inadequacy of the Shannon information in quantum measurements

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Časlav Brukner and Anton Zeilinger
Institute for Experimentalphysics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria

See Also: Erratum

Received 26 January 2000; published 18 January 2001

In a classical measurement the Shannon information is a natural measure of our ignorance about properties of a system. There, observation removes that ignorance in revealing properties of the system which can be considered to preexist prior to and independent of observation. Because of the completely different root of a quantum measurement as compared to a classical measurement, conceptual difficulties arise when we try to define the information gain in a quantum measurement using the notion of Shannon information. The reason is that, in contrast to classical measurements, quantum measurements, with very few exceptions, cannot be claimed to reveal a property of the individual quantum system existing before the measurement is performed.

© 2001 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.63.022113
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.63.022113
PACS:
03.65.Ta, 03.67.-a

See Also

Erratum: Časlav Brukner and Anton Zeilinger, Erratum: Conceptual inadequacy of the Shannon information in quantum measurements [Phys. Rev. A 63, 022113 (2001)], Phys. Rev. A 67, 049901 (2003).