Quantum Diffusion, Measurement and Filtering

Abstract

A brief presentation of the basic concepts in quantum probability theory is given in comparison to the classical one. The notion of quantum white noise, its explicit representation in Fock space, and necessary results of noncommutative stochastic analysis and integration are outlined. Algebraic differential equations that unify the quantum non Markovian diffusion with continuous non demolition observation are derived. A stochastic equation of quantum diffusion filtering generalising the classical Markov filtering equation to the quantum flows over arbitrary *-algebra is obtained. A Gaussian quantum diffusion with one dimensional continuous observation is considered.The a posteriori quantum state difusion in this case is reduced to a linear quantum stochastic filter equation of Kalman-Bucy type and to the operator Riccati equation for quantum correlations. An example of continuous nondemolition observation of the coordinate of a free quantum particle is considered, describing a continuous collase to the stationary solution of the linear quantum filtering problem found in the paper.