Stochastic path-integral formalism for continuous quantum measurement

Abstract

We generalize and extend the stochastic path integral formalism and action principle for continuous quantum measurement introduced in [A. Chantasri, J. Dressel and A. N. Jordan, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 88}, 042110 (2013)], where the optimal dynamics, such as the most-likely paths, are obtained by extremizing the action of the path integral. In this work, we apply exact functional methods as well as develop a perturbative approach to investigate the statistical behaviour of continuous quantum measurement, with examples given for the qubit case. For qubit measurement with zero qubit Hamiltonian, we find analytic solutions for average trajectories and their variances while conditioning on fixed initial and final states. For qubit measurement with unitary evolution, we use the perturbation method to compute expectation values, variances, and multi-time correlation functions of qubit trajectories in the short-time regime. Moreover, we consider continuous qubit measurement with feedback control, using the action principle to investigate the global dynamics of its most-likely paths, and finding that in an ideal case, qubit state stabilization at any desired pure state is possible with linear feedback. We also illustrate the power of the functional method by computing correlation functions for the qubit trajectories with a feedback loop to stabilize the qubit Rabi frequency.