Quantum Markov chains: recurrence, Schur functions and splitting rules (Q2288295)

The present paper concerns quantitative and qualitative questions related to the notion of recurrence for quantum Markov chains. The latter are formally defined as a specific class of discrete quantum evolutions and may be described via certain completely positive trace preserving (CPTP) maps acting on the trace class operators on a Hilbert space \(H\); in fact, the authors conduct a large part of their analysis in the context of general CPTP maps. The notion of recurrence treated in the paper corresponds to `monitored' evolutions, where at each step a measurement verifies whether the system arrived to a given state (or more generally to a subspace of states). This approach, together with standard quantum probabilistic concepts of the probability that a given measurement leads to a positive/negative outcome, leads naturally to definitions of recurrence, the probability of arrival and average arrival time for any initial state \(\rho_0\) and a `target' subspace \(H_0\). Relative simplicity of definitions does not prevent somewhat unexpected behaviour: for example, the probability of arrival of a quantum system to a subspace \(H_0\) can be strictly smaller than the probability of its arrival to a particular state belonging to \(H_0\). The key tool of analysis is provided by the reduced Schur functions related to the resolvent of the product of the CPTP map in question and the projection onto the complement of the target subspace \(H_0\). In the first part of the paper, the authors provide criteria for recurrence in terms of the reduced Schur functions. In the second, they discuss specific graph-related constructions `gluing' two quantum Markov chains into a new one, and establish when a given quantum Markov chain arises in such a way. The constructions allow for a satisfactory description of reduced Schur functions, so also recurrence results, for the resulting system in terms of the original ones. The results are illustrated by several examples and, in particular, the last section contains highly non-trivial applications of the earlier results to the study of the nearest neighbour quantum walks on the half-line and on the full line.