In mathematical physics, Gleason's theorem shows that the rule one uses to calculate probabilities in quantum physics, the Born rule, can be derived from the usual mathematical representation of measurements in quantum physics together with the assumption of non-contextuality. Andrew M. Gleason first proved the theorem in 1957, answering a question posed by George W. Mackey, an accomplishment that was historically significant for the role it played in showing that wide classes of hidden-variable theories are inconsistent with quantum physics. Multiple variations have been proven in the years since. Gleason's theorem is of particular importance for the field of quantum logic and its attempt to find a minimal set of mathematical axioms for quantum theory.
Statement of the theorem
Conceptual background
In quantum mechanics, each physical system is associated with a Hilbert space. For the purposes of this overview, the Hilbert space is assumed to be finite-dimensional. In the approach codified by John von Neumann, a measurement upon a physical system is represented by a self-adjoint operator on that Hilbert space sometimes termed an "observable". The eigenvectors of such an operator form an orthonormal basis for the Hilbert space, and each possible outcome of that measurement corresponds to one of the vectors comprising the basis. A density operator is a positive-semidefinite operator on the Hilbert space whose trace is equal to 1. In the language of von Weizsäcker, a density operator is a "catalogue of probabilities": for each measurement that can be defined, the probability distribution over the outcomes of that measurement can be computed from the density operator. The procedure for doing so is the Born rule, which states that
where is the density operator, and is the projection operator onto the basis vector corresponding to the measurement outcome .
The Born rule associates a probability with each unit vector in the Hilbert space, in such a way that these probabilities sum to 1 for any set of unit vectors comprising an orthonormal basis. Moreover, the probability associated with a unit vector is a function of the density operator and the unit vector, and not of additional information like a choice of basis for that vector to be embedded in. Gleason's theorem establishes the converse: all assignments of probabilities to unit vectors (or, equivalently, to the operators that project onto them) that satisfy these conditions take the form of applying the Born rule to some density operator. Gleason's theorem holds if the dimension of the Hilbert space is 3 or greater; counterexamples exist for dimension 2.
Deriving the state space and the Born rule
The probability of any outcome of a measurement upon a quantum system must be a real number between 0 and 1 inclusive, and in order to be consistent, for any individual measurement the probabilities of the different possible outcomes must add up to 1. Gleason's theorem shows that any function that assigns probabilities to measurement outcomes, as identified by projection operators, must be expressible in terms of a density operator and the Born rule. This gives not only the rule for calculating probabilities, but also determines the set of possible quantum states.
Let be a function from projection operators to the unit interval with the property that, if a set of projection operators sum to the identity matrix (that is, if they correspond to an orthonormal basis), then
Such a function expresses an assignment of probability values to the outcomes of measurements, an assignment that is "noncontextual" in the sense that the probability for an outcome does not depend upon which measurement that outcome is embedded within, but only upon the mathematical representation of that specific outcome, i.e., its projection operator. Gleason's theorem states that for any such function , there exists a positive-semidefinite operator with unit trace such that
Both the Born rule and the fact that "catalogues of probability" are positive-semidefinite operators of unit trace follow from the assumptions that measurements are represented by orthonormal bases, and that probability assignments are "noncontextual". In order for Gleason's theorem to be applicable, the space on which measurements are defined must be a real or complex Hilbert space, or a quaternionic module. (Gleason's argument is inapplicable if, for example, one tries to construct an analogue of quantum mechanics using p-adic numbers.)
