Quantum Measurement and Differential Processes Mini-Course, October 27 - November 28, 2025

This lecture 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, a work that emerged from a recent fundamental breakthrough: how to realize the measurement of a spin’s direction. Topics include photodetection, optical heterodyne, other phase-point measurements, measurements of spin direction, tomography and informational completeness, coherent states, frame operators, operator ordering,  instrument theory, decoherence, POVMs, Kraus (measurement) operators, diffusive measurements, Markov processes, stochastic calculus, Kraus-operator distribution functions, instrumental groups, generalized Luders rule, simultaneous measurements of noncommuting observables, universal enveloping algebras, basic differential geometry (curvature and torsion), and adaptive measurement.