Entropic relations for retrodicted quantum measurements

Abstract

Given an arbitrary measurement over a system of interest, the outcome of a posterior measurement can be used for improving the statistical estimation of the system state after the former measurement. Here, we realize an informational-entropic study of this kind of (Bayesian) retrodicted quantum measurement formulated in the context of quantum state smoothing. We show that the (average) entropy of the system state after the retrodicted measurement (smoothed state) is bounded from below and above by the entropies of the first measurement when performed in a selective and nonselective standard predictive way, respectively. For bipartite systems the same property is also valid for each subsystem. Their mutual information, in the case of a former single projective measurement, is also bounded in a similar way. The corresponding inequalities provide a kind of retrodicted extension of Holevo bound for quantum communication channels. These results quantify how much information gain is obtained through retrodicted quantum measurements in quantum state smoothing. While an entropic reduction is always granted, in bipartite systems mutual information may be degraded. Relevant physical examples confirm these features.