IISER MOHALI

Abstract: Standard measurements in quantum theory are complete sets of orthogonal projectors. However, it is well-established that the full scope of quantum measurements is represented by the more general notion of positive operator-valued measures (POVMs). These have been shown to outperform standard projective measurements for a variety of tasks in quantum information processing; however, they are harder to implement in experiments. Therefore, a number of works have asked the natural question: how well can one simulate POVMs with projective measurements? In this talk, I will:
1. Introduce basic quantum measurement theory and comment on the usefulness of POVMs.
2. Motivate the notion of projective simulation and comment on the "most non-projective measurement".
3. Hint at how the results can be extended to the more general concept of quantum instruments.

References:
1. arXiv:2508.03652 (2025)
2. Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 040202 (2025)