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arXiv:quant-ph/0012115

Entropy and information gain in quantum continual measurements

Alberto Barchielli

Published Dec 21, 2000• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The theory of measurements continuous in time in quantum mechanics (quantum continual measurements) has been formulated by using the notions of instrument, positive operator valued measure, etc., by using quantum stochastic differential equations and by using classical stochastic differential equations (SDE's) for vectors in Hilbert spaces or for trace-class operators. In the same times Ozawa made developments in the theory of instruments and introduced the related notions of a posteriori states and of information gain [1]. In this paper we introduce a simple class of SDE's relevant to the theory of continual measurements and we recall how they are related to instruments and a posteriori states and, so, to the general formulation of quantum mechanics. Then we introduce and use the notion of information gain and the other results of the paper [1] inside the theory of continual measurements. [1] M. Ozawa, On information gain by quantum measurements of continuous observables, J. Math. Phys. 27 (1986) 759-763.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0012115

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The theory of measurements continuous in time in quantum mechanics (quantum continual measurements) has been formulated by using the notions of instrument, positive operator valued measure, etc., by using quantum stochastic differential equations and by using classical stochastic differential equations (SDE's) for vectors in Hilbert spaces or for trace-class operators. In the same times Ozawa made developments in the theory of instruments and introduced the related notions of a posteriori states and of information gain [1]. In this paper we introduce a simple class of SDE's relevant to the theory of continual measurements and we recall how they are related to instruments and a posteriori states and, so, to the general formulation of quantum mechanics. Then we introduce and use the notion of information gain and the other results of the paper [1] inside the theory of continual measurements. [1] M. Ozawa, On information gain by quantum measurements of continuous observables, J. Math. Phys. 27 (1986) 759-763.
The theory of measurements continuous in time in quantum mechanics (quantum continual measurements) has been formulated by using the notions of instrument and positive operator valued measure, functional integrals, quantum stochastic differential equations and classical stochastic differential equations (SDE's). Various types of SDE's are involved, and precisely linear and non linear equations for vectors in Hilbert spaces and for trace-class operators. All such equations contain either a diffusive part, or a jump one, or both. In this paper we introduce a class of linear SDE's for trace-class operators, relevant to the theory of continual measurements, and we recall how such SDE's are related to instruments and master equations and, so, to the general formulation of quantum mechanics. We do not present the Hilbert space formulation of such SDE's and we make some mathematical simplifications: no time dependence is introduced into the coefficients and only bounded operators on the Hilbert space of the quantum system are considered. Then we introduce the notion of a posteriori state and the non linear SDE satisfied by such states and we give conditions from which such equation is assured to preserve pure states and to send any mixed state into a pure one for large times. Finally we review the known results about the existence and uniqueness of invariant measures in the purely diffusive case and we give some concrete examples of physical systems.
The theory of measurements continuous in time in quantum mechanics (quantum continual measurements) has been formulated by using the notions of instrument and positive operator valued measure [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ], arisen inside the operational approach [ 1 , 7 ] to quantum mechanics, by using functional integrals [ 8 , 9 , 10 ], by using quantum stochastic differential equations [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ] and by using classical stochastic differential equations (SDE’s) [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 4 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 6 ]. Various types of SDE’s are involved, and precisely linear and non linear equations for vectors in Hilbert spaces and for trace-class operators. All such equations contain either a diffusive part, or a jump one, or both.
In this paper we will give a short presentation of the quantum L\'evy-Khinchin formula and of the formulation of quantum continual measurements based on stochastic differential equations, matters which we had the pleasure to work on in collaboration with Prof.\ Holevo. Then we will begin the study of various entropies and relative entropies, which seem to be promising quantities for measuring the information content of the continual measurement under consideration and for analysing its asymptotic behaviour.
It is shown that the entropy reduction (the information gain in the initial terminology) of an efficient (ideal or pure) quantum measurement coincides with the generalized quantum mutual information of a quantum-classical channel mapping an a priori state to the corresponding posteriori probability distribution of the outcomes of the measurement. As a result the entropy reduction is defined for arbitrary a priori states (not only for states with finite von Neumann entropy) and its analytical properties is studied in detail by using general properties of the quantum mutual information. By using this approach it is shown that the entropy reduction of an efficient quantum measurement is a nonnegative lower semicontinuous concave function on the set of all a priori states having continuous restrictions to subsets on which the von Neumann entropy is continuous. Monotonicity and subadditivity of the entropy reduction are also easily proved by this method. A simple continuity condition for the entropy reduction and for the mean posteriori entropy considered as functions of a pair (a priori state, measurement) is obtained. A characterization of an irreducible measurement (in the Ozawa sense) which is not efficient is considered in the Appendix.
In this article we study the long time behaviour of a class of stochastic differential equations introduced in the theory of measurements continuous in time for quantum open systems. Such equations give the time evolution of the a posteriori states for a system underlying a continual measurement. First of all we give conditions for the equation to preserve pure states and then, in the case of a finite-dimensional Hilbert space, we obtain sufficient conditions from which the stochastic equation for a posteriori states is ensured to map, for t → +∞, mixed states into pure ones. Finally we study existence and uniqueness of an invariant measure for the equations which preserve pure states. We give a general theorem for the purely diffusive case, again in the finite-dimensional case; we then apply it to some physical examples. For the purely jump case, an example is discussed in which the invariant measure exists and is unique.