We introduce a notion of absorption operators in the context of quantum Markov processes. The absorption problem in invariant domains (enclosures) is treated for a quantum Markov evolution on a separable Hilbert space, both in discrete and continuous times: We define a well-behaving set of positive operators which can correspond to classical absorption probabilities, and we study their basic properties, in general, and with respect to accessibility structure of channels, transience and recurrence. In particular, we can prove that no accessibility is allowed between the null and positive recurrent subspaces. In the case, when the positive recurrent subspace is attractive, ergodic theory will allow us to get additional results, in particular about the description of fixed points.
We consider homogeneous open quantum walks on a lattice with finite dimensional local Hilbert space and we study in particular the position process of the quantum trajectories of the walk. We prove that the properly rescaled position process asymptotically approaches a mixture of Gaussian measures. We can generalize the existing central limit type results and give more explicit expressions for the involved asymptotic quantities, dropping any additional condition on the walk. We use deformation and spectral techniques, together with reducibility properties of the local channel associated with the open quantum walk. Further, we can provide a large deviation principle in the case of a fast recurrent local channel and at least lower and upper bounds in the general case.
The theory of quantum jump trajectories provides a new framework for understanding dynamical phase transitions in open systems. A candidate for such transitions is the atom maser, which for certain parameters exhibits strong intermittency in the atom detection counts and has a bistable stationary state. Although previous numerical results suggested that the “free energy” may not be a smooth function, we show that the atom detection counts satisfy a large deviations principle and, therefore, we deal with a phase crossover rather than a genuine phase transition. We argue, however, that the latter occurs in the limit of an infinite pumping rate. As a corollary, we obtain the central limit theorem for the counting process. The proof relies on the analysis of a certain deformed generator whose spectral bound is the limiting cumulant generating function. The latter is shown to be smooth so that a large deviations principle holds by the Gärtner–Ellis theorem. One of the main ingredients is the Krein–Rutman theory, which extends the Perron–Frobenius theorem to a general class of positive compact semigroups.
In the present work we review and refine some results about fixed points of semigroups of quantum channels. Noncommutative potential theory enables us to show that the set of fixed points of a recurrent semigroup is a W * -algebra; aside from the intrinsic interest of this result, it brings an improvement in the study of fixed points by means of absorption operators (a noncommutative generalization of absorption probabilities): under the assumption of absorbing recurrent space (hence allowing non-trivial transient space) we can provide a description of the fixed points set and a probabilistic characterization of when it is a W * -algebra in terms of absorption operators. Moreover we are able to exhibit an example of a recurrent semigroup which does not admit a decomposition of the Hilbert space into orthogonal minimal invariant domains (contrarily to the case of classical Markov chains and positive recurrent semigroups of quantum channels).
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