Quantum Zeno Effect in Open Quantum Systems

Abstract We prove the quantum Zeno effect in open quantum systems whose evolution, governed by quantum dynamical semigroups, is repeatedly and frequently interrupted by the action of a quantum operation. For the case of a quantum dynamical semigroup with a bounded generator, our analysis leads to a refinement of existing results and extends them to a larger class of quantum operations. We also prove the existence of a novel strong quantum Zeno limit for quantum operations for which a certain spectral gap assumption, which all previous results relied on, is lifted. The quantum operations are instead required to satisfy a weaker property of strong power-convergence. In addition, we establish, for the first time, the existence of a quantum Zeno limit for open quantum systems in the case of unbounded generators. We also provide a variety of physically interesting examples of quantum operations to which our results apply.