Linking Classical and Quantum Stochastic Processes

Abstract

We define a map which relates four dimensional classical stochastic matrices to qubit quantum channels. The map preserves the spectrum and the composition of processes. To do this we introduce the concept of Bloch tetrahedron which plays the same role in the classical context as the Bloch sphere in the quantum context. A similar map is also induced between dynamical generators of classical and quantum stochastic processes. Possibilities for generalization to arbitrary dimensions are also discussed.