2018/01/30 by Felix A. Pollock, César Rodríguez-Rosario, Thomas Frauenheim +2
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.120.040405
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 040405 (2018) · 5+3 pages, 4 figures; split off from earlier version of arXiv:1512.00589
arxiv created 2018/01/30 · arxiv updated 2018/01/31
We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for a quantum process to be Markovian which coincides with the classical one in the relevant limit. Our condition unifies all previously known definitions for quantum Markov processes by accounting for all potentially detectable memory effects. We then derive a family of measures of non-Markovianity with clear operational interpretations, such as the size of the memory required to simulate a process, or the experimental falsifiability of a Markovian hypothesis.