Simulating all quantum measurements using only projective measurements and postselection

Implementation of generalized quantum measurements is often experimentally demanding, as it requires performing a projective measurement on a system of interest extended by the ancilla. We report an alternative scheme for implementing generalized measurements that uses solely: (a) classical randomness and post-processing, (b) projective measurements on a relevant quantum system and (c) postselection on non-observing certain outcomes. The method implements arbitrary quantum measurement in d dimensional system with success probability 1/d. It is optimal in the sense that for any dimensionn d there exist measurements for which the success probability cannot be higher. We apply our results to bound the relative power of projective and generalised measurements for unambiguous state discrimination. Finally, we test our scheme experimentally on IBM quantum processor. Interestingly, due to noise involved in the implementation of entangling gates, the quality with which our scheme implements generalized qubit measurements is higher than the one obtained with the standard construction using the auxiliary system.