Noise and disturbance in quantum measurements: an information-theoretic approach

Francesco Buscemi, Michael J. W. Hall, Masanao Ozawa, Mark M. Wilde

Published 2013-10-24, updated 2014-01-17Version 3

We introduce information-theoretic definitions for noise and disturbance in quantum measurements and prove a state-independent noise-disturbance tradeoff relation that these quantities have to satisfy in any conceivable setup. Contrary to previous approaches, the information-theoretic quantities we define are invariant under relabelling of outcomes, and allow for the possibility of using quantum or classical operations to `correct' for the disturbance. We also show how our bound implies strong tradeoff relations for mean square deviations.