Generalized Kac's Lemma for Recurrence Time in Iterated Open Quantum Systems

Abstract

We consider recurrence to the initial state after repeated actions of a quantum channel. After each iteration a projective measurement is applied to check recurrence. The corresponding return time is known to be an integer for the special case of unital channels, including unitary channels. We prove that for a more general class of quantum channels the expected return time can be given as the inverse of the weight of the initial state in the steady state. This statement is a generalization of the Kac lemma for classical Markov chains.