We show how continuous matrix product states of quantum fields can be described in terms of the dissipative nonequilibrium dynamics of a lower-dimensional auxiliary boundary field by demonstrating that the spatial correlation functions of the bulk field correspond to the temporal statistics of the boundary field. This equivalence (1) illustrates an intimate connection between the theory of continuous quantum measurement and quantum field theory, (2) gives an explicit construction of the boundary field allowing the extension of real-space renormalization group methods to arbitrary dimensional quantum field theories without the introduction of a lattice parameter, and (3) yields a novel interpretation of recent cavity QED experiments in terms of quantum field theory, and hence paves the way toward observing genuine quantum phase transitions in such zero-dimensional driven quantum systems.

• Received 20 August 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.260401