  If a generalised measurement is performed on a quantum system and we do not
know the outcome, are we able to retrodict it with a second measurement? We
obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for perfect retrodiction of the
outcome of a known generalised measurement, given the final state, for an
arbitrary initial state. From this, we deduce that, when the input and output
Hilbert spaces have equal (finite) dimension, it is impossible to perfectly
retrodict the outcome of any fine-grained measurement (where each POVM element
corresponds to a single Kraus operator) for all initial states unless the
measurement is unitarily equivalent to a projective measurement. It also
enables us to show that every POVM can be realised in such a way that perfect
outcome retrodiction is possible for an arbitrary initial state when the number
of outcomes does not exceed the output Hilbert space dimension. We then
consider the situation where the initial state is not arbitrary, though it may
be entangled, and describe the conditions under which unambiguous outcome
retrodiction is possible for a fine-grained generalised measurement. We find
that this is possible for some state if the Kraus operators are linearly
independent. This condition is also necessary when the Kraus operators are
non-singular. From this, we deduce that every trace-preserving quantum
operation is associated with a generalised measurement whose outcome is
unambiguously retrodictable for some initial state, and also that a set of
unitary operators can be unambiguously discriminated iff they are linearly
independent. We then examine the issue of unambiguous outcome retrodiction
without entanglement. This has important connections with the theory of locally
linearly dependent and locally linearly independent operators.
