Reconstructing open quantum system dynamics with limited control

The dynamics of an open quantum system can be fully described and tomographically reconstructed if the experimenter has complete control over the system of interest. Most real-world experiments do not fulfill this assumption, and the amount of control is restricted by the experimental set-up. That is, the set of performable manipulations of the system is limited. For instance, imagine a set-up where unitary operations are easy to make, but only one measurement at the end of the experiment is allowed. In this paper, we provide a general reconstruction scheme that yields operationally well-defined dynamics for any conceivable kind of experimental situation. If one additional operation can be performed, these `restricted' dynamics allow for the construction of witnesses for initial correlations and the presence of memory effects. We demonstrate the applicability of our framework for the the two important cases where the set of performable operations comprises only unitary operations or projective measurements, respectively, and show that it provides a powerful tool for the description of quantum control experiments.