Classical and quantum measurements of position

Abstract

We study the dynamics of classical and quantum systems undergoing a continuous measurement of position by schematizing the measurement apparatus with an infinite set of harmonic oscillators at finite temperature linearly coupled to the measured system. Selective and nonselective measurement processes are then introduced according to a selection of or an average over all possible initial configurations of the measurement apparatus. At quantum level, the selective processes are described by a nonlinear stochastic Schrödinger equation whose solutions evolve into properly defined coherent states in the case of linear systems. For arbitrary measured systems, classical behavior is always recovered in the macroscopic limit.