The Stratonovich Interpretation of Quantum Stochastic Approximations

John Edward Gough

We extend the Itō-to-Stratonovich analysis or quantum stochastic differential equations, introduced by Gardiner and Collett for emission (creation), absorption (annihilation) processes, to include scattering (conservation) processes. Working within the framework of quantum stochastic calculus, we define Stratonovich calculus as an algebraic modification of the Itō one and give conditions for the existence of Stratonovich time-ordered exponentials. We show that conversion formula for the coefficients has a striking resemblance to Green’s function formulas from standard perturbation theory. We show that the calculus conveniently describes the Markov limit of regular open quantum dynamical systems in much the same way as in the Wong-Zakai approximation theorems of classical stochastic analysis. We extend previous limit results to multiple-dimensions with a proof that makes use of diagrammatic conventions.

Walter Lehr

John R. Klauder

John Edward Gough

A theory of stochastic flows over the algebra of observables of a dynamical system is presented in which the main objective is to ensure that the overall canonical/symplectic structure on the algebra is preserved. We study both classical and quantum systems and the importance of physical interpretation in the Stratonovich interpretation is stressed. We find the natural formulation of quantum dissipative systems to be given in terms of quantum stochastic calculus. This treatment allows for a physically meaningful treatment of both constant and nonlinear dissipation. As an application, we quantize a mechanical system with the same nonlinear damping mechanism as the van der Pol oscillator.

Igor G. Vladimirov

This paper is concerned with a filtering problem for a class of nonlinear quantum stochastic systems with multichannel nondemolition measurements. The system-observation dynamics are governed by a Markovian Hudson-Parthasarathy quantum stochastic differential equation driven by quantum Wiener processes of bosonic fields in vacuum state. The Hamiltonian and system-field coupling operators, as functions of the system variables, are represented in a Weyl quantization form. Using the Wigner-Moyal phase-space framework, we obtain a stochastic integro-differential equation for the posterior quasi-characteristic function (QCF) of the system conditioned on the measurements. This equation is a spatial Fourier domain representation of the Belavkin-Kushner- Stratonovich stochastic master equation driven by the innovation process associated with the measurements. We also discuss a more specific form of the posterior QCF dynamics in the case of linear system-field coupling and outline a Gaussian approximation of the posterior quantum state.

Stanley Gudder