Dirichlet forms in quantum theory

Jean-Luc Sauvageot

Matthijs Vernooij, Melchior Wirth

A KMS-symmetric quantum Markov semigroup is completely determined by the quadratic form in induces on the GNS Hilbert space. The quadratic forms that arise in this way are called quantum Dirichlet forms. In this article we give a complete description of bounded quantum Dirichlet forms in terms of derivations. In particular, we exhibit an explicit characterization of the bounded quantum Dirichlet forms on type I factors. We also show that any unbounded quantum Dirichlet form can be represented in terms of derivations. The key technical insight is that the modular group always restricts to a strongly continuous group on the domain of a quantum Dirichlet form such that the square root of the analytic generator is accretive with respect to the form norm.

Josef Janyška, Marco Modugno

Francisco Marcelo Fernández

We discuss the application of perturbation theory to statistical mechanics both in the operator form of Schwinger and in the scalar form as a sum over states. We briefly consider and compare the use of variational parameters in both approaches. By means of a simple model we show that Schwinger perturbation theory might fail when the eigenfunctions satisfy Dirichlet boundary conditions. On the other hand, the sum over states gives accurate results.

Bertfried Fauser, H. Dehnen

Tristan Benoist, Lisa Hänggli, Cambyse Rouzé

We provide a stochastic interpretation of non-commutative Dirichlet forms in the context of quantum filtering. For stochastic processes motivated by quantum optics experiments, we derive an optimal finite time deviation bound expressed in terms of the non-commutative Dirichlet form. Introducing and developing new non-commutative functional inequalities, we deduce concentration inequalities for these processes. Examples satisfying our bounds include tensor products of quantum Markov semigroups as well as Gibbs samplers above a threshold temperature.