Entropy production in the quantum measurement of continuous observables

Paolo Grigolini A, Marco G. Pala, Luigi Palatella

D. Matos, Lev N Kantorovich, Ian J. Ford

Abstract We investigate the total stochastic entropy production of a two-level bosonic open quantum system under protocols of time dependent coupling to a harmonic environment. These processes are intended to represent the measurement of a system observable, and consequent selection of an eigenstate, whilst the system is also subjected to thermalising environmental noise. The entropy production depends on the evolution of the system variables and their probability density function, and is expressed through system and environmental contributions. The continuous stochastic dynamics of the open system is based on the Markovian approximation to the exact, noise-averaged stochastic Liouville-von Neumann equation, unravelled through the addition of stochastic environmental disturbance mimicking a measuring device. Under the thermalising influence of time independent coupling to the environment, the mean rate of entropy production vanishes asymptotically, indicating equilibrium. In contrast, a positive mean production of entropy as the system responds to time dependent coupling characterises the irreversibility of quantum measurement, and a comparison of its production for two coupling protocols, representing connection to and disconnection from the external measuring device, satisfies a detailed fluctuation theorem.

Lorenzo Pucci, Massimiliano Esposito, Luca Peliti

Kohei Kobayashi

We derive a universal inequality that provides a lower bound on the ensemble-averaged von Neumann entropy change in a quantum system subject to continuous measurement and dissipation. Our result clarifies how entropy production is fundamentally constrained by three distinct contributions: (i) the non-Hermitian structure of the dissipation operator, (ii) the standard variance associated with measurement-induced fluctuations, and (iii) a generalized quantum variance reflecting the noncommutativity between the measurement observable and the quantum state. This third term vanishes when the state and observable commute, and thus represents a purely quantum contribution arising from coherence disturbance and measurement backaction. The derived inequality generalizes classical information-thermodynamic relations, such as the Sagawa--Ueda inequality, to the quantum regime, providing a new perspective on the trade-offs between information acquisition, control, and entropy production in continuously monitored open quantum systems.

Göran Lindblad

Max F. Frenzel, Takahiro Sagawa

We consider an open quantum system for which only a subset of all possible transitions are accessible, while the remaining ones are hidden from direct observation. Using a modification of the notion of quantum jump trajectories we introduce the coarse-grained hidden entropy, which quantifies the entropy production in the hidden subsystem conditioned on our observations of the visible part. The entropy production consisting of the sum of visible and coarse-grained hidden entropy is shown to satisfy an integral fluctuations theorem. Depending on the nature of the continuously occurring measurement and feedback processes between the interacting subsystems, the visible entropy can take negative values in which case the hidden systems acts as a Maxwell's demon. Our results allow us to study quantum-mechanical effects in autonomous systems, such as the autonomous quantum Maxwell's demon we introduce as an illustrative example.