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arXiv:2411.11760 · Physical Review A

Spikes in Poissonian quantum trajectories

Alan Sherry, Cédric Bernardin, Abhishek Dhar, Aritra Kundu, Raphaël Chétrite

Published Apr 23, 2025• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We consider the dynamics of a continuously monitored qubit in the limit of strong measurement rate where the quantum trajectory is described by a stochastic master equation with Poisson noise. Such limits are expected to give rise to quantum jumps between the pointer states associated with the nondemolition measurement. A surprising discovery in earlier work [A. Tilloy et al., Phys. Rev. A 92, 052111 (2015)] on quantum trajectories with Brownian noise was the phenomena of spikes observed in-between the quantum jumps. Here, we show that spikes are observed also for Poisson noise. We consider three cases where the nondemolition is broken by adding, to the basic strong measurement dynamics, either unitary evolution or thermal noise or additional measurements. We present a complete analysis of the spike and jump statistics for all three cases using the fact that the dynamics effectively corresponds to that of stochastic resetting. We provide numerical results to support our analytic results.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.111.042215

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We consider the dynamics of a continuously monitored qubit in the limit of strong measurement rate where the quantum trajectory is described by a stochastic master equation with Poisson noise. Such limits are expected to give rise to quantum jumps between the pointer states associated with the nondemolition measurement. A surprising discovery in earlier work [A. Tilloy et al., Phys. Rev. A 92, 052111 (2015)] on quantum trajectories with Brownian noise was the phenomena of spikes observed in-between the quantum jumps. Here, we show that spikes are observed also for Poisson noise. We consider three cases where the nondemolition is broken by adding, to the basic strong measurement dynamics, either unitary evolution or thermal noise or additional measurements. We present a complete analysis of the spike and jump statistics for all three cases using the fact that the dynamics effectively corresponds to that of stochastic resetting. We provide numerical results to support our analytic results.
A quantum system subjected to a strong continuous monitoring undergoes quantum jumps. This very-well-known fact hides a neglected subtlety: sharp scale-invariant fluctuations invariably decorate the jump process, even in the limit where the measurement rate is very large. This article is devoted to the quantitative study of these remaining fluctuations, which we call spikes, and to a discussion of their physical status. We start by introducing a classical model where the origin of these fluctuations is more intuitive, and then jump to the quantum realm where their existence is less intuitive. We compute the exact distribution of the spikes for a continuously monitored qubit. We conclude by discussing their physical and operational relevance.
Small quantum systems can now be continuously monitored experimentally which allows for the reconstruction of quantum trajectories. A peculiar feature of these trajectories is the emergence of jumps between the eigenstates of the observable which is measured. Using the stochastic master equation (SME) formalism for continuous quantum measurements, we show that the density matrix of a system indeed shows a jumpy behaviour when it is subjected to a tight measurement (even if the noise in the SME is Gaussian ). We are able to compute the jump rates analytically for any system evolution, i.e. any Lindbladian, and we illustrate how our general recipe can be applied to two simple examples. We then discuss the mathematical, foundational and practical applications of our results. The analysis we present is based on a study of the strong noise limit of a class of stochastic differential equations (the SME) and as such the method may be applicable to other physical situations in which a strong noise limit plays a role.
This paper studies a class of quantum stochastic differential equations, modeling an interaction of a system with its environment in the quantum noise approximation. The space representing quantum noise is the symmetric Fock space over L2R+. Using the isomorphism of this space with the space of square-integrable functionals of the Poisson process, the equations can be represented as classical stochastic differential equations, driven by Poisson processes. This leads to a discontinuous dynamical state reduction which we compare to the Ghirardi-–Rimini–Weber model. A purely quantum object, the norm process, is found, which plays the role of an observer {in the sense of Everett [H. Everett III, Rev. Mod. Phys. 29(3), 454 (1957)]}, encoding all events occurring in the system space. An algorithm introduced by Dalibard et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 68(5), 580 (1992)] to numerically solve quantum master equations is interpreted in the context of unraveling, and the trajectories of expected values of system observables are calculated.
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In this thesis we consider primarily the dynamics of quantum systems subjected to continuous observation. In the Schrödinger picture the evolution of a continuously monitored quantum system, referred to as a `quantum trajectory', may be described by a stochastic equation for the state vector. We present a method of deriving explicit evolution operators for linear quantum trajectories, and apply this to a number of physical examples of varying mathematical complexity. In the Heisenberg picture evolution resulting from continuous observation may be described by quantum Langevin equations. We use this method to examine the noise spectrum that results from a continuous observation of the position of a moving mirror, and examine the possibility of detecting the noise resulting from the quantum back-action of the measurement. In addition to the work on continuous measurement theory, we also consider the problem of reconstructing the state of a quantum system from a set of measurements. We present a scheme for determining the state of a single cavity mode from the photon statistics measured both before and after an interaction with one or two two-level atoms.
This thesis considers quantum systems which interact with their surrounding environment. Specifically we consider the underlying stochastic dynamics which arise from the back-action of measurements performed in the environment. These quantum trajectories can be tracked by continuously monitoring the environment, as is now possible in modern experiments. We consider phenomena understood at the average level of the system state density matrix, and explore these at this more information rich level. This is especially relevant for experimental setups and implementation of quantum technologies. Firstly, we consider how systems exhibiting metastability behave at the level of stochastic quantum trajectories. In doing so we make comparisons to classical theories of metastability, where trajectories exhibit fast relaxation into distinct phases and slow transitions between them. We also illustrate when this phenomenology does not hold, with instead the emergence of a slow manifold in the form of a decoherence free subspace. We also highlight the useful role that quantum reset processes can play in the analysis of stochastic quantum trajectories. The dynamics of the stochastic quantum trajectories depends on the choice of environmental measurements. There are many choices which leave the average dynamics unchanged, but give different statistical ensembles of quantum trajectories. This gauge freedom of the average dynamics is well known. We derive the analogous result at the level of quantum trajectory ensembles; giving the measurement protocols which leave the generator of the stochastic trajectory dynamics unchanged. We also extend this to include joint trajectories of conditional system states and their associated measurement records, either full records or coarse-grained. Using these results on gauge freedoms of quantum trajectories, we consider the conditions under which the trajectory dynamics exhibit a weak unitary symmetry. We then consider under what conditions the joint state of the system and environment exhibit symmetric dynamics, including under various levels of dephasing. We find that the joint dynamics always features a separable symmetry directly related to that of the quantum master equation, but for quantum trajectories the corresponding symmetry is present only if the counting measurement satisfies certain conditions.