This series is a crash course introduction to a handful of advanced topics designed to tackle the general problem of how to engineer Positive Operator-Valued Measures (POVMs) using observable building blocks, the so-called Instrument Manifold Program. This program emerged from a recent fundamental breakthrough: how to realize the measurement of a spin’s direction, a.k.a. the spin-coherent-state POVM, a spherical set of outcomes analogous to the well known coherent-state POVM of the standard phase plane.
**Outline:**
Oct 27: Introduction: The Planimeter and the ``Spherimeter''
Oct 30: Indirect Measurement and System-Meter Interaction
Nov 03: POVMs and Decoherence
Nov 06: Generalized Observables: Phase-Point and Spin-Direction
Nov 10: Transformation Groups and Enveloping Algebras
Nov 13: Frame Operators and Quasi-Probability Distributions
Nov 17: The Arthurs-Kelly (1965) and D’Ariano (2002) Measurements
Nov 20: Optical Homodyne and Heterodyne
Nov 24: Continuous Measurement and the Kraus-Operator Density
Nov 27: Simultaneous Measurements of Non-Commuting Observables
Dec 01: Instrumental Groups and Universal Markov Processes
Dec 04: Universal Instrument Navigation
Dec 08: Non-Euclidean Geometry
Dec 11: Non-Euclidean POVMs
**Location & Building Access:**
Alice Room, 3rd Floor, Perimeter Institute, 31 Caroline St N, Waterloo
(Exception - November 27 in Space Room, 4th Floor)
**Registration:**
Please sign-up here: https://forms.office.com/r/dEA4EUq0CU
Participants who do not have an access card for Perimeter Institute must sign in at the security desk before each session. For information on parking or accessibility please contact academic@perimeterinstitute.ca.
