Time-local unraveling of non-Markovian stochastic Schr\"odinger equations

Abstract

Non-Markovian stochastic Schr\"odinger equations (NMSSE) are important tools in quantum mechanics, from the theory of open systems to foundations. Yet, in general, they are but formal objects: their solution can be computed numerically only in some specific cases or perturbatively. This article is focused on the NMSSE themselves rather than on the open-system evolution they unravel and aims at making them less abstract. Namely, we propose to write the stochastic realizations of linear NMSSE as averages over the solutions of an auxiliary equation with an additional random field. Our method yields a non-perturbative numerical simulation algorithm for generic linear NMSSE that can be made arbitrarily accurate for reasonably short times. For isotropic complex noises, the method extends from linear to non-linear NMSSE and allows to sample the solutions of norm-preserving NMSSE directly.