Simultaneous continuous measurement of non-commuting observables: quantum state correlations

Abstract

We consider the temporal correlations of the quantum state of a qubit subject to simultaneous continuous measurement of two non-commuting qubit observables. Such qubit state correlators are defined for an ensemble of qubit trajectories, which has the same fixed initial state and can also be optionally constrained by a fixed final state. We develop a stochastic path integral description for the continuous quantum measurement and use it to calculate the considered correlators. Exact analytic results are possible in the case of ideal measurements of equal strength and are also shown to agree with solutions obtained using the Fokker-Planck equation. For a more general case with decoherence effects and inefficiency, we use a diagrammatic approach to find the correlators perturbatively in the quantum efficiency. We also calculate the state correlators for the quantum trajectories which are extracted from readout signals measured in a transmon qubit experiment, by means of the quantum Bayesian state update. We find an excellent agreement between the correlators based on the experimental data and those obtained from our analytical and numerical results.