Projection Operator Stochastic Equations for Non-Markovian Quantum Systems Under Continuous Measurement-Based Feedback

Quantum Markov models have been successfully used to accurately model various physical quantum systems in fields such as quantum optics, optomechanics and superconducting circuits and they provide the basis for (measurement-based) quantum feedback control.

However, the quantum Markov assumption is a strong one and it is not expected to hold for general quantum systems of interest.

The projection operator approach is one approach that has been developed to model non-Markovian quantum systems by considering its embedding in a larger Markovian quantum system, but mainly in the context of quantum master equations for the dynamics of the unmonitored reduced quantum state of a quantum system.

This approach was recently adapted for continuously measured non-Markovian quantum systems, which enables open-loop control but did not yet consider the presence of feedback of the stochastic measurement record, deriving non-Markovian SDEs for the evolution of the projected state of the Markovian embedding.

This paper generalizes these stochastic equations to the setting of stochastic feedback based on the continuous-measurement record and shows that the equations take the same form but that previously deterministic terms become stochastic ones which depend on the measurement record, as would be intuitively expected.

The stochastic equations are obtained for a generalized class of measurements that includes continuous (possibly adaptive) homodyne and photon counting measurements.