Thermodynamics of Quantum Jump Trajectories

Abstract

We apply the large-deviation method to study trajectories in dissipative quantum systems. We show that in the long time limit the statistics of quantum jumps can be understood from thermodynamic arguments in terms of dynamical phases and transitions between them in trajectory space. We illustrate our approach with three simple examples: a driven 2-level system where we find a particular scale invariance point in the ensemble of trajectories of emitted photons; a blinking 3-level system, where we argue that intermittency in the photon count is related to a crossover between distinct dynamical phases; and a micromaser, where we find an actual first-order phase transition in the ensemble of trajectories.