Informational Steady States and Conditional Entropy Production in Continuously Monitored Systems in PRX Quantum!

QTeQ’s recent research work https://doi.org/10.1103/PRXQuantum.3.010303). In this work, the team composed by QTeQ member Mauro Paternostro, visiting scientist Alessio Belenchia, and Gabriel Landi from the University of São Paolo explored the thermodynamics and information dynamics in quantum systems subject to repeated collisions with a monitored environment.

In the work, the authors put forth an overarching framework for the description of the thermodynamics of continuously monitored systems, where measurements are only performed on the environment connected to a system. In this way, a theory of conditional thermodynamics can be constructed. Additionally, the framework introduces the notion of information steady states. That is, steady states of matter that only exist because measurements are being continually performed.