Quantum measurement feedback models of friction beyond the diffusive limit and their connection to collapse models

Abstract

We present and discuss a master equation blueprint for a generic class of quantum measurement feedback based models of friction. A desired velocity-dependent friction force is realized on average by random repeated applications of unsharp momentum measurements followed by immediate outcome-dependent momentum displacements. The master equations can describe arbitrarily strong measurement-feedback processes as well as the weak continuous limit resembling diffusion master equations of Caldeira-Leggett type. We show that the special case of linear friction can be equivalently represented by an average over random position measurements with squeezing and position displacements as feedback. In fact, the dissipative continuous spontaneous localization model of objective wavefunction collapse realizes this representation for a single quantum particle. We reformulate a consistent many-particle generalization of this model and highlight the possibility of feedback-induced correlations between otherwise non-interacting particles.