Central limit theorem and large deviation principle for continuous time open quantum walks (Q1675050)

The theory of quantum Brownian motion describes the properties of a large class of open quantum systems and persists as a vivid research subject for at least 40 years. Various modifications of the original idea, as formalised by the Lindblad theory, have been proposed. A specific streamline is that of so-called open quantum walks, originally introduced in [\textit{S. Attal} et al., J. Stat. Phys. 147, No. 4, 832--852 (2012; Zbl 1246.82039)] as quantum generalizations of classical Markov chains. Their major advantage is that they concern evolutions of lattices that are driven by quantum operations, with a direct relevance to so-called quantum information research. Continuous-time models appear as natural generalizations of quantum walks and the concept of the open quantum Brownian motion has been pursued in [\textit{M. Bauer}, \textit{D. Bernard} and \textit{A. Tilloy}, ``The open quantum Brownian motions'', J. Stat. Mech. Theory Exp. 9, 09001 (2014)] (its relation to the historically well founded notion of the quantum BM is somewhat disregarded). The present paper is devoted to the study of homogeneous CTOQW on \(\mathbb Z^2\). Like in the traditional Lindblad framework, these refer to the evolution of density operators, but are different from the usual models of unitary random walks, specifically with respect to their large-time behavior. A conceptual input here is that of quantum trajectories, interpreted as evolutions of quantum system that undergo indirect measurements of the position of the walker. That in fact refers to continuous measurements of the position. This entails a formulation of the large deviation principle.