Open quantum systems are harder to track than open classical systems

Abstract

For a Markovian (in the strongest sense) open quantum system it is possible, by continuously monitoring the environment, to perfectly track the system; that is, to know the stochastically evolving pure state of the system without altering the master equation. In general, even for a system with a finite Hilbert space dimension $D$, the pure state trajectory will explore an infinite number of points in Hilbert space, meaning that the dimension $K$ of the classical memory required for the tracking is infinite. However, Karasik and Wiseman [Phys. Rev. Lett., 106(2):020406, 2011] showed that tracking of a qubit ($D=2$) is always possible with a bit ($K=2$), and gave a heuristic argument implying that a finite $K$ should be sufficient for any $D$, although beyond $D=2$ it would be necessary to have $K>D$. Our paper is concerned with rigorously investigating the relationship between $D$ and $K_{\rm min}$, the smallest feasible $K$. We confirm the long-standing conjecture of Karasik and Wiseman that, for generic systems with $D>2$, $K_{\rm min}>D$, by a computational proof (via Hilbert Nullstellensatz certificates of infeasibility). That is, beyond $D=2$, $D$-dimensional open quantum systems are provably harder to track than $D$-dimensional open classical systems. We stress that this result allows complete freedom in choice of monitoring scheme, including adaptive monitoring which is, in general, necessary to implement a physically realizable ensemble (as it is known) of just $K$ pure states. Moreover, we develop, and better justify, a new heuristic to guide our expectation of $K_{\rm min}$ as a function of $D$, taking into account the number $L$ of Lindblad operators as well as symmetries in the problem. The use of invariant subspace and Wigner symmetries (that we recently introduced elsewhere, [New J. Phys. https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ab14b2]) makes it tractable to conduct a numerical search, using the method of polynomial homotopy continuation, to find finite physically realizable ensembles in $D=3$. The results of this search support our heuristic. We thus have confidence in the most interesting feature of our heuristic: in the absence of symmetries, $K_{\rm min} \sim D^2$, implying a quadratic gap between the classical and quantum tracking problems. Explicit adaptive monitoring schemes that realize the discovered finite ensembles are obtained numerically, thus facilitating future experimental investigations.