Stochastic simulations of conditional states of partially observed systems, quantum and classical

Abstract

In a partially observed quantum or classical system the information that we cannot access results in our description of the system becoming mixed, even if we have perfect initial knowledge. That is, if the system is quantum the conditional state will be given by a state matrix ρr(t), and if classical, the conditional state will be given by a probability distribution Pr(x,t), where r is the result of the measurement. Thus to determine the evolution of this conditional state, under continuous-in-time monitoring, requires a numerically expensive calculation. In this paper we demonstrate a numerical technique based on linear measurement theory that allows us to determine the conditional state using only pure states. That is, our technique reduces the problem size by a factor of N, the number of basis states for the system. Furthermore we show that our method can be applied to joint classical and quantum systems such as arise in modelling realistic (finite bandwidth, noisy) measurement.