Theory for frequent measurements of spontaneous emissions in a non-Markovian environment: Beyond the Lorentzian spectrum

Abstract

The measurement-result-conditioned evolution of a system (e.g., an atom) with spontaneous emissions of photons is described by the quantum trajectory (QT) theory. In this work we generalize the associated QT theory from an infinitely wide bandwidth Markovian environment to the finite bandwidth non-Markovian environment. In particular, we generalize the treatment for an arbitrary spectrum, which is not restricted by the specific Lorentzian case. We rigorously prove the general existence of a perfect scaling behavior jointly defined by the bandwidth of the environment and the time interval between successive photon detections. For a couple of examples, we obtain analytic results to facilitate the QT simulations based on the Monte-Carlo algorithm. For the case where the analytical result is not available, a numerical scheme is proposed for practical simulations.