- Accepted Paper
Purification of a monitored qubit: Exact path-integral solution
Phys. Rev. E - Accepted 1 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cjfz-qn1b
Phys. Rev. E - Accepted 1 October, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cjfz-qn1b
We investigate the purification dynamics of a single qubit under continuous-in-time monitoring. By employing a collisional model framework where the system interacts sequentially with ancillary qubits, we describe the conditioned evolution of the density matrix through a stochastic master equation. We show that for initial mixed states, the dynamics reduce to a multiplicative Langevin equation for a single scalar parameter representing the state’‘s purity. This stochastic process is solved exactly using the Onsager–Machlup path-integral formalism, allowing us to derive the full probability distribution for the qubit’’s trajectories. Our analytical results reveal that purification is characterized by a dynamical crossover from a diffusion-dominated regime to a measurement-dominated regime, visible in the emergence of a bimodal state distribution. The analytical solutions are in strong agreement with numerical simulations, providing a robust theoretical benchmark for the study of information extraction in monitored quantum systems.
If the author has provided any supplemental materials with this article they will be available upon publication of the version of record.