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Physical Review A

Continuous measurement and non-Markovian quantum trajectories

Michael W. Jack, Matthew J. Collett

Published May 16, 2000• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Based on a microscopic model of an open system consisting of a boson field coupled linearly to a system, we formulate quantum trajectories as continuous measurements of the output field from the system. We present a formulation for the case when the field quantity that is being monitored effectively commutes with itself at different times. In general, this results in a non-Markovian evolution for the reduced system conditioned on the measurements. Under the finite-memory time approximation this evolution can be numerically simulated. The generalization of the techniques of quantum trajectories to the non-Markovian regime is expected to contribute to our understanding of open system problems beyond the Born-Markov approximation.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.61.062106

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Based on a microscopic model of an open system consisting of a boson field coupled linearly to a system, we formulate quantum trajectories as continuous measurements of the output field from the system. We present a formulation for the case when the field quantity that is being monitored effectively commutes with itself at different times. In general, this results in a non-Markovian evolution for the reduced system conditioned on the measurements. Under the finite-memory time approximation this evolution can be numerically simulated. The generalization of the techniques of quantum trajectories to the non-Markovian regime is expected to contribute to our understanding of open system problems beyond the Born-Markov approximation.
We present a theory of non-Markovian quantum trajectories that describe the dynamics of a quantum system coupled to an environment of harmonic oscillators. When averaged over the noise, they reproduce the standard reduced density matrix without any approximation, in particular without Markov approximation. The time evolution of the environment can also be determined from these non-Markovian quantum trajectories. We present a simple example to demonstrate the power of our approach. As a remarkable feature of non-Markovian quantum trajectories, we show that for strong coupling to a dissipative environment with memory, the asymptotic state can be reached in a finite time. Further examples are described in the text.
A large class of non-Markovian quantum processes in open systems can be formulated through time-local master equations which are not in Lindblad form. It is shown that such processes can be embedded in a Markovian dynamics which involves a time-dependent Lindblad generator on an extended state space. If the state space of the open system is given by some Hilbert space H\mathcal{H}H, the extended state space is the triple Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}\ensuremath{\bigotimes}{\mathbb{C}}^{3}$ which is obtained by combining the open system with a three-state system. This embedding is used to derive an unraveling for non-Markovian time evolution by means of a stochastic process in the extended state space. The process is defined through a stochastic Schr\"odinger equation which generates genuine quantum trajectories for the state vector conditioned on a continuous monitoring of an environment. The construction leads to a continuous measurement interpretation for non-Markovian dynamics within the framework of the theory of quantum measurement.
Starting from a generalization of the quantum trajectory theory [based on the stochastic Schr\"odinger equation (SSE)], non-Markovian models of quantum dynamics are derived. In order to describe non-Markovian effects, the approach used in this article is based on the introduction of random coefficients in the usual linear SSE. A major interest is that this allows a consistent theory of quantum measurement in continuous time to be developed for these non-Markovian quantum trajectory models. In this context, the notions of ``instrument,'' ``a priori,'' and ``a posteriori'' states can be introduced. The key point is that by starting from a stochastic equation on the Hilbert space of the system, we are able to respect the complete positivity of the mean dynamics for the statistical operator and the requirements of the axioms of quantum measurement theory. The flexibility of the theory is next illustrated by a concrete physical model of a noisy oscillator where non-Markovian effects come from the random environment, colored noises, randomness in the stimulating light, and delay effects. The statistics of the emitted photons and the heterodyne and homodyne spectra are studied, and we show how these quantities are sensitive to the non-Markovian features of the system dynamics, so that, in principle, the observation and analysis of the fluorescent light could reveal the presence of non-Markovian effects and allow for a measure of the spectra of the noises affecting the system dynamics.
Quantum trajectories describe the stochastic evolution of an open quantum system conditioned on continuous monitoring of its output, such as by an ideal photodetector. In practice an experimenter has access to an output filtered through various electronic devices, rather than the microscopic states of the detector. This introduces several imperfections into the measurement process, of which only inefficiency has previously been incorporated into quantum trajectory theory. However, all electronic devices have finite bandwidths, and the consequent delay in conveying the output signal to the observer implies that the evolution of the conditional state of the quantum system must be non-Markovian. We present a general method of describing this evolution and apply it to avalanche photodiodes and to photoreceivers. We include the effects of efficiency, dead time, bandwidth, electronic noise and dark counts. The essential idea is to treat the quantum system and classical detector jointly, and to average over the latter to obtain the conditional quantum state. The significance of our theory is that quantum trajectories for realistic detection are necessary for sophisticated approaches to quantum feedback, and our approach could be applied in many areas of physics.
Continuous measurements are central to quantum control and sensing, yet lack a model-independent operational description that can be applied to arbitrary non-Markovian processes without specifying a microscopic measurement model. Existing multi-time frameworks, such as process matrices, allow for an arbitrary sequence of operations to be applied on a general process, but are restricted to interventions at discrete times and cannot represent measurements of finite duration. We introduce a continuous-time extension of multi-time quantum processes based on process and operation functionals, which generalise the Feynman-Vernon influence functional and yield a continuous Born rule that cleanly separates processes from operations. This framework provides a consistent representation of non-Markovian dynamics under continuous monitoring and leads to natural definitions of causality and Markovianity in continuous time, opening the way to formalising quantum causal structures in the continuum. We illustrate the formalism by analysing continuous measurements in a generalised Caldeira-Leggett model, demonstrating its applicability to realistic non-Markovian scenarios.
We present a formulation of non-Markovian quantum trajectories for open systems from a measurement theory perspective. In our treatment there are three distinct ways in which non-Markovian behavior can arise: a mode-dependent coupling between the bath (reservoir) and system, a dispersive bath, and spectral detection of the output into the bath. In the first two cases the non-Markovian behavior is intrinsic to the interaction; in the third case the non-Markovian behavior arises from the method of detection. We focus in detail on the trajectories that simulate real-time spectral detection of the light emitted from a localized system. In this case the non-Markovian behavior arises from the uncertainty in the time of emission of particles that are later detected. The results of computer simulations of the spectral detection of the spontaneous emission from a strongly driven two-level atom are presented.