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Quantum stochastic calculus, operation valued stochastic processes and continual measurements in quantum mechanics

AIP Publishing
Journal of Mathematical Physics
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Abstract

The physical idea of a continual observation on a quantum system has been recently formalized by means of the concept of operation valued stochastic process (OVSP). In this article, it is shown how the formalism of quantum stochastic calculus of Hudson and Parthasarathy allows, in a simple way, for constructing a large class of OVSP’s that in particular contains the quantum counting processes of Davies and Srinivas and continual ‘‘Gaussian’’ measurements. This result is obtained by means of a stochastic dilation of the OVSP’s: at the level of the enlarged system probabilities turn out to be expressed in terms of projection valued measures associated with certain time-dependent, commuting, self-adjoint operators.
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... To have no dissipation in K cl , also the compensated jump term in (47) has to vanish; then, we have also K 4 int = 0. Again, only the interaction term K 1 int , which contains H x , survives: a deterministic classical system can act only as a kind of control on the quantum system. ...
... The generator of the reduced classical dynamics takes the form (47). Semigroups like T t (59) are well known in the theory of classical stochastic processes; they are semigroups of transition probabilities of time-homogeneous Markov processes [16,17] ...
... m. We take the case of no noise: in (47) we have ...
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In the case of a quantum-classical hybrid system with a finite number of degrees of freedom, the problem of characterizing the most general dynamical semigroup is solved, under the restriction of being quasi-free. This is a generalization of a Gaussian dynamics, and it is defined by the property of sending (hybrid) Weyl operators into Weyl operators in the Heisenberg description. The result is a quantum generalization of the Lévy–Khintchine formula; Gaussian and jump contributions are included. As a byproduct, the most general quasi-free quantum-dynamical semigroup is obtained; on the classical side the Liouville equation and the Kolmogorov–Fokker–Planck equation are included. As a classical subsystem can be observed, in principle, without perturbing it, information can be extracted from the quantum system, even in continuous time; indeed, the whole construction is related to the theory of quantum measurements in continuous time. While the dynamics is formulated to give the hybrid state at a generic time [Formula: see text], we show how to extract multi-time probabilities and how to connect them to the quantum notions of positive operator-valued measure and instrument. The structure of the generator of the dynamical semigroup is analyzed, in order to understand how to go on to non-quasi-free cases and to understand the possible classical-quantum interactions; in particular, all the interaction terms which allow to extract information from the quantum system necessarily vanish if no dissipation is present in the dynamics of the quantum component. A concrete example is given, showing how a classical component can input noise into a quantum one and how the classical system can extract information on the behavior of the quantum one.
... The interest in quantum/classical hybrid systems is old, see for instance [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and references therein. One of the main motivations of the study of hybrid systems is that the output of a monitored system is classical; then, implicitly or explicitly, the dynamics of quantum/classical systems is involved in the theory of quantum measurements in continuous time and quantum filtering [1][2][3][4][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. Moreover, hybrid systems could be used as an approximation to complicate quantum systems, as an effective theory [1,4,[9][10][11][12]29]. ...
... About the dynamics (56) of the quantum component, we note the dependence on X(t − ) in the Liouville operator (51) and (52). This gives the non-Markovian behavior of the mean quantum dynamics, already commented after equation (25). When present, this x-dependence in (51) represents the action of the classical component on the quantum one, say a classical feedback or an external control [24,28,37,58]. ...
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Quantum trajectory techniques have been used in the theory of open systems as a starting point for numerical computations and to describe the monitoring of a quantum system in continuous time. We extend this technique to develop a general approach to the dynamics of quantum/classical hybrid systems. By using two coupled stochastic differential equations, we can describe a classical component and a quantum one which have their own intrinsic dynamics and which interact with each other. A mathematically rigorous construction is given, under the restriction of having a Markovian joint dynamics and of involving only bounded operators on the Hilbert space of the quantum component. An important feature is that, if the interaction allows for a flow of information from the quantum component to the classical one, necessarily the dynamics is dissipative. We show also how this theory is connected to a suitable hybrid dynamical semigroup, which reduces to a quantum dynamical semigroup in the purely quantum case and includes Liouville and Kolmogorov–Fokker–Planck equations in the purely classical case. Moreover, this semigroup allows to compare the proposed stochastic dynamics with various other proposals based on hybrid master equations. Some simple examples are constructed in order to show the variety of physical behaviors which can be described; in particular, a model presenting hidden entanglement is introduced.
... Also the quantum measurements in continuous time can be interpreted in terms of hybrid systems; in this case the classical component is the monitored signal extracted from the quantum system [2,3,[13][14][15][16]. A typical realization is given by direct, homodyne and heterodyne detection in quantum optics [17,18]. ...
... Finally, a fruitful approach to quantum measurements in continuous time has been through the use of quantum stochastic calculus [17,18,23]; this should open new possibilities also to construct quantum-classical dynamical theories. ...
... Refs. [21,22,23]). It was soon realized (cf. ...
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... 12.4.3]. The characteristic function has been used, for instance, to study the quantum analogues of the infinite-divisible distributions [3][4][5][6]43,44] and measurements of Gaussian type [42,46,49]. Here, we are interested only in the latter application, as our approximating bi-observables will typically be Gaussian. ...
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... One of the main motivations of the study of hybrid systems is that the output of a monitored system is classical; then, implicitly or explicitly, the dynamics of quantum/classical systems is involved in the theory of quantum measurements in continuous time, quantum filtering,. . . [1][2][3][4][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Moreover, hybrid systems could be used as an approximation to complicate quantum systems, as an effective theory [1,4,8,9,11,12]. ...
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