Non-Markovian open quantum systems: Input-output fields, memory, and monitoring

Abstract

Principles of monitoring non-Markovian open quantum systems are analyzed. We use the field representation of the environment (Gardiner and Collet, 1985) for the separation of its memory and detector part, respectively. We claim the system-plus-memory compound becomes Markovian, the detector part is tractable by standard Markovian monitoring. Because of non-Markovianity, only the mixed state of the system can be predicted, the pure state of the system can be retrodicted. We present the corresponding non-Markovian stochastic Schr\"odinger equation.