Classical quantum stochastic processes

We investigate the role of coherence and Markovianity in finding an answer to the question whether the outcomes of a projectively measured quantum stochastic process are compatible with a classical stochastic process. For this purpose we put forward an operationally motivated definition of “incoherent dynamics” applicable to any open system's dynamics. For nondegenerate observables described by rank-1 projective measurements we show that classicality always implies incoherent dynamics, whereas the converse is true only for invertible Markovian (but not necessarily time-homogeneous) dynamics. For degenerate observables the picture is somewhat reversed as classicality does no longer suffice to imply incoherent dynamics (even in the invertible Markovian case), while an incoherent, invertible Markovian dynamics still implies classicality.

Figure 1

Plot of the exact time evolution [Eq. (A15), solid blue line] compared with the approximated one [Eq. (A17), dashed pink line]. Parameters are $\mathrm{\Gamma }=1,s=1$, and $x_0=1$.