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arXiv:2509.16841 · Physical Review A

Quantum Fokker-Planck master equation with general signal filtering

Guilherme De Sousa

Published Jan 2, 2026• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this paper, we derive a general master equation for continuous feedback based on arbitrary linear signals. This result is an extension of the Quantum Fokker-Planck Master Equation derived by Annby-Andersson et al (Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 050401) to the case where the experiment has a general filtering structure. The filtering operation can include delayed information, memory effects, and non-Markovian signal processing. Using this general master equation, we derive analytical results for the ground state cooling of a quantum harmonic oscillator. We compared our results with those derived by De Sousa et al (Phys. Rev. E 111, 014152). Our framework aims to capture more realistic situations, to allow experiments to be better modeled, and to study non-Markovian effects in the spectral properties of the measurement signal.

DOI
10.1103/hxfx-b5q5

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In this paper, we derive a general master equation for continuous feedback based on arbitrary linear signals. This result is an extension of the Quantum Fokker-Planck Master Equation derived by Annby-Andersson et al (Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 050401) to the case where the experiment has a general filtering structure. The filtering operation can include delayed information, memory effects, and non-Markovian signal processing. Using this general master equation, we derive analytical results for the ground state cooling of a quantum harmonic oscillator. We compared our results with those derived by De Sousa et al (Phys. Rev. E 111, 014152). Our framework aims to capture more realistic situations, to allow experiments to be better modeled, and to study non-Markovian effects in the spectral properties of the measurement signal.
Quantum technologies and experiments often require preparing systems in low-temperature states. Here we investigate cooling schemes using feedback protocols modeled with a quantum Fokker-Planck master equation (QFPME) recently derived by Annby-Andersson et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 050401 (2022)0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.129.050401]. This equation describes systems under continuous weak measurements, with feedback based on the outcome of these measurements. We apply this formalism to study the cooling and trapping of a harmonic oscillator for several protocols based on position and/or momentum measurements. We find that the protocols can cool the oscillator down to, or close to, the ground state for suitable choices of parameters. Our analysis provides an analytically solvable case study of quantum measurement and feedback and illustrates the application of the QFPME to continuous quantum systems.
In this work, we derive a deterministic master equation to model a general, possibly non-Markovian, feedback. The master equation describes a system with a general evolution and measurement operation, with feedback being applied in terms of signal processing. The feedback signal has an arbitrary structure with dimensionality that indicates the degree of non-Markovianity of the information processing. We present examples to illustrate how such a master equation can be used to model systems with memory feedback and non-trivial frequency dependence.
Measurement and feedback control are essential features of quantum science, with applications ranging from quantum technology protocols to information-to-work conversion in quantum thermodynamics. Theoretical descriptions of feedback control are typically given in terms of stochastic equations requiring numerical solutions, or are limited to linear feedback protocols. Here we present a formalism for continuous quantum measurement and feedback, both linear and nonlinear. Our main result is a quantum Fokker-Planck master equation describing the joint dynamics of a quantum system and a detector with finite bandwidth. For fast measurements, we derive a Markovian master equation for the system alone, amenable to analytical treatment. We illustrate our formalism by investigating two basic information engines, one quantum and one classical.
The joint state of a continuously monitored quantum system and the classical filtered measurement record has recently been shown to be described by a quantum Fokker-Planck master equation []. We present a deterministic approach to compute the steady state of the system and detector. The method is shown to become particularly efficient in the absence of feedback, which we exploit to develop a perturbative approach valid for weak feedback. We show that through this method we can extract the full counting statistics of the signal, the quantum-classical mutual information between the system and signal, and the Fisher information of the signal, which can be used for sensing applications. Our results are illustrated with both single-qubit models and the spin chains governed by the one-dimensional transverse field Ising model or the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model.
A quantum master equation describing the stochastic dynamics of a quantum massive system interacting with a quantum gravitational field is useful for the investigation of quantum gravitational and quantum informational issues such as the quantum nature of gravity, gravity-induced entanglement and gravitational decoherence. Studies of the decoherence of quantum systems by an electromagnetic field shows that a lower temperature environment is more conducive to successful quantum information processing experiments. Likewise, the quantum nature of (perturbative) gravity is far better revealed at lower temperatures than high, minimizing the corruptive effects of thermal noise. In this work, generalizing earlier results of the Markovian ABH master equation [1,2] which is valid only for high temperatures, we derive a non-Markovian quantum master equation for the reduced density matrix, and the associated Fokker-Planck equation for the Wigner distribution function, for the stochastic dynamics of two masses following quantum trajectories, interacting with a graviton field, including the effects of graviton noise, valid for all temperatures. We follow the influence functional approach exemplified in the derivation of the non-Markovian Hu-Paz-Zhang master equation [62,64] for quantum Brownian motion. We find that in the low temperature limit, the off-diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix decrease in time logarithmically for the zero temperature part and quadratically in time for the temperature-dependent part, which is distinctly different from the Markovian case. We end with a summary of our findings and a discussion on how this problem studied here is related to the quantum stochastic equation derived in [77] for gravitational self force studies, and to quantum optomechanics where experimental observation of gravitational decoherence and entanglement may be implemented.
Quantum Markov models have been successfully used to accurately model various physical quantum systems in fields such as quantum optics, optomechanics and superconducting circuits and they provide the basis for (measurement-based) quantum feedback control. However, the quantum Markov assumption is a strong one and it is not expected to hold for general quantum systems of interest. The projection operator approach is one approach that has been developed to model non-Markovian quantum systems by considering its embedding in a larger Markovian quantum system, but mainly in the context of quantum master equations for the dynamics of the unmonitored reduced quantum state of a quantum system. This approach was recently adapted for continuously measured non-Markovian quantum systems, which enables open-loop control but did not yet consider the presence of feedback of the stochastic measurement record, deriving non-Markovian SDEs for the evolution of the projected state of the Markovian embedding. This paper generalizes these stochastic equations to the setting of stochastic feedback based on the continuous-measurement record and shows that the equations take the same form but that previously deterministic terms become stochastic ones which depend on the measurement record, as would be intuitively expected. The stochastic equations are obtained for a generalized class of measurements that includes continuous (possibly adaptive) homodyne and photon counting measurements.