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Covariant Quantum Measurements and Stochastic Dynamics on Representation Space

Quantum Physics 2026-07-27 v1 Mathematical Physics

Abstract

We develop a framework for group-covariant quantum measurements in which measurement-induced transitions between irreducible representation sectors are described by a stochastic process on representation space. Starting from the Peter-Weyl decomposition, we construct covariant measurement operators from irreducible tensor operators and show that, for symmetry-invariant states, the measurement channel reduces to a Markov process on the representation graph. We further show that analyticity of the measurement operator constrains the detector spectrum through Sugiura's theorem, motivating a class of exponentially decaying detector models. Specializing to SU(2), we obtain the transition kernel in closed form, establish reversibility and the associated invariant measure, and derive a continuum Fokker-Planck description of the induced dynamics. Analytical predictions for the drift and diffusion coefficients are found to agree with numerical simulations. Our results provide a stochastic description of repeated covariant quantum measurements on representation space.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.25101,
  title  = {Covariant Quantum Measurements and Stochastic Dynamics on Representation Space},
  author = {Naeem Shahid},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.25101},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

17 pages, 5 figures