Quantum Bayesian Nets

We begin with a review of a well-known class of networks, Classical Bayesian (CB) nets (also called causal probabilistic nets by some). Given a situation which includes randomness, CB nets are used to calculate the probabilities of various hypotheses about the situation, conditioned on the available evidence. We introduce a new class of networks, which we call Quantum Bayesian (QB) nets, that generalize CB nets to the quantum mechanical regime. We explain how to use QB nets to calculate quantum mechanical conditional probabilities (in case of either sharp or fuzzy observations), and discuss the connection of QB nets to Feynman Path integrals. We give examples of QB nets that involve a single spin-(1)/(2) particle passing through a configuration of two or three Stern—Gerlach magnets. For the examples given, we present the numerical values of various conditional probabilities, as calculated by a general computer program specially written for this purpose.