Unravelling the noise: the discrimination of wave function collapse models under time-continuous measurements

Abstract

Inspired by the notion that environmental noise is in principle observable, while fundamental noise due to spontaneous localization would not be, we study the estimation of the diffusion parameter induced by wave function collapse models under continuous monitoring of the environment. We take into account finite measurement efficiencies and, in order to quantify the advantage granted by monitoring, we analyse the quantum Fisher information associated with such a diffusion parameter, identify optimal measurements in limiting cases, and assess the performance of such measurements in more realistic conditions.

Keywords

• quantum estimation
• wave-function collapse models
• stochastic master equation
• quantum control