Hi all,

This week we have several visitors, and tomorrow we'll hear from John de Brota from University of Massachusetts Boston. His title and abstract are attached below.

Best,

Joe

Title: "Why the MIC Shall Inherit the Earth: From QBism to Minimal Informationally Complete Quantum Measurements"

Abstract: There have been many information-flavored reconstructions of quantum theory. Common wisdom advises that these reconstructions be “interpretation independent.” Possibly as a consequence of this agnosticism, however, we are left with reconstructions that, at least to some, do not suggest much about the nature of reality. We discuss an attempt to reconstruct quantum theory explicitly from QBist principles. QBism deems all probabilities in quantum theory to be subjective Bayesian degrees of belief. Taking this perspective seriously implies that the Born rule is a normative relation between hypothetical measurements an agent may consider. In the reconstruction, this property appears as a structural analog of the law of total probability, thereby directly reflecting the point of view that quantum theory is an empirical addition to coherence. The explicit form of this relation is not unique, relying instead on the choice of a minimal informationally complete (MIC) quantum measurement. A SIC-POVM has been chosen in the past mostly on aesthetic grounds, but which MIC-POVM we choose stands a chance of revealing or obscuring the properties which probability distributions equivalent to quantum states must have. To make an informed choice, we must learn as much as we can about the space of MIC-POVMs. In this talk I will elaborate these motivations and prove several properties about MIC-POVMs.