Transport of quantum information in linear spin chains has been the subject of much theoretical work. Experimental studies by nuclear spin systems in solid-state by NMR (a natural implementation of such models) is complicated since the dipolar Hamiltonian is not solely comprised of nearest-neighbor XY-Heisenberg couplings. We present here a similarity transformation between the XY-Heisenberg Hamiltonian and the grade raising Hamiltonian, an interaction which is achievable with the collective control provided by radio-frequency pulses in NMR. Not only does this second Hamiltonian allows us to simulate the information transport in a spin chain, but it also provides a means to observe its signature experimentally.
High fidelity quantum information transport is necessary for most practical models of quantum computation. By analogy with optical wave guides, a spatio-temporally varying magnetic potential on a one dimensional spin chain can achieve high fidelity transport of spin excitations. By comparing different potential shapes, we establish the effects of potential shape on the fidelity and transport speed. We incorporate disorder into our model and show methods to minimise its effect on transport. Finally, we discuss implementations of our scheme in several accessible systems based on hydrogenic appro…
A globally controlled scheme for quantum transport is proposed. The scheme works on a 1D chain of nearest neighbor coupled systems of qudits (finite dimension), or qunats (continuous variable), taking any arbitrary initial quantum state of the chain and producing a final quantum state which is perfectly spatially mirrored about the mid-point of the chain. As a particular novel application, the method can be used to transport continuous variable (CV) quantum states. A physical realization is proposed where it is shown how the quantum states of the microwave fields held in a chain of driven supe…
A protocol for fast and robust magnon transport in a one-dimensional spin chain is devised. Employing an approximate mapping between the chain and a single harmonically trapped particle, we exploit the known analytic control protocols for the latter and adopt them to achieve fast, high-fidelity transport in the chain. We compare the performance with finite time adiabatic protocols, establishing that the designed scheme allows for significantly faster and more stable transport. Furthermore, we show that a sharp transition exists between regions in which the protocol is effective and when it bre…
The entanglement dynamics of spin chains is investigated using Heisenberg-XY spin Hamiltonian dynamics. The various measures of two-qubit entanglement are calculated analytically in the time-evolved state starting from initial states with no entanglement and exactly one pair of maximally-entangled qubits. The localizable entanglement between a pair of qubits at the end of chain captures the essential features of entanglement transport across the chain, and it displays the difference between an initial state with no entanglement and an initial state with one pair of maximally-entangled qubits.
We investigate the transport of energy in a linear chain of two-level quantum emitters ("atoms") weakly coupled to a blackbody radiation bath. We show that, simply by displacing one or more atoms from their regular-chain positions, the efficiency of the energy transport can be considerably amplified of at least one order of magnitude. Besides, in configurations providing an efficiency greater than $100\%$ , the distance between the two last atoms of the chain can be up to 20 times larger than the one in the regular chain, thus achieving a much longer-range energy transport. By performing both …
We predict a mechanism for achieving complete population inversion in a continuously driven InAs/GaAs semiconductor quantum dot featuring $V$-type transitions. This highly nonequilibrium steady state is enabled by the interplay between $V$-type interband transitions and a non-Markovian decoherence mechanism, introduced by acoustic phonons. The population trapping mechanism is generalized to a chain of coupled emitters. Exploiting the population inversion, we predict unidirectional excitation transport from one end of the chain to the other without external bias, independent of the unitary inte…
We explore heat transport across an ion Coulomb crystal beyond the harmonic regime by tuning it across the structural phase transition between the linear and zigzag configurations. This demonstrates that the control of the spatial ion distribution by varying the trapping frequencies renders ion Coulomb crystals an ideal test-bed to study heat transport properties in finite open system of tunable non-linearities.
We investigate energy transport in several two-level atom or spin-1/2 models by a direct coupling to heat baths of different temperatures. The analysis is carried out on the basis of a recently derived quantum master equation which describes the nonequilibrium properties of internally weakly coupled systems appropriately. For the computation of the stationary state of the dynamical equations, we employ a Monte Carlo wave-function approach. The analysis directly indicates normal diffusive or ballistic transport in finite models and hints toward an extrapolation of the transport behavior of infi…
We consider spin-chain-star systems characterized by N-wise many-body interactions between the spins in each chain and the central one. We show that such systems can be exactly mapped into standard spin-star systems through unitary transformations. Such an approach allows the solution of the dynamic problem of an XX spin-chain-star model and transparently shows the emergence of quantum correlations in the system, based on the idea of entanglement between chains.
Quantum transport along a tight-binding chain connected to Markovian reservoirs
Kirensky Institute of Physics, Federal Research Centre KSC SB RAS（基连斯基物理研究所，俄罗斯科学院西伯利亚分院克拉斯诺亚尔斯克科学中心联邦研究中心）；IRC SQC, Siberian Federal University（西伯利亚联邦大学量子系统与量子控制国际研究中心）；School of Engineering Physics and Radio Electronics, Siberian Federal University（西伯利亚联邦大学工程物理与无线电电子学院）
We study the dynamics of a Heisenberg-XY spin chain with an unknown state coded into one qubit or a pair of entangled qubits, with the rest of the spins being in a polarized state. The time evolution involves magnon excitations, and through them the entanglement is transported across the channel. For a large number of qubits, explicit formulae for the concurrences, measures for two-qubit entanglements, and the fidelity for recovering the state some distance away are calculated as functions of time. Initial states with an entangled pair of qubits show better fidelity, which takes its first maxi…
We study the propagation of different types of correlations through a quantum bus formed by a chain of coupled harmonic oscillators. This includes steering, entanglement, mutual information, quantum discord, and Bell-like nonlocality. The whole system consists of the quantum bus (propagation medium) and other quantum harmonic oscillators (sources and receivers of quantum correlations) weakly coupled to the chain. We are particularly interested in using the point of view of transport to spot distinctive features displayed by different kinds of correlations. We found, for instance, that there ar…
We propose a protocol for quantum energy teleportation which transports energy in spin chains to distant sites only by local operations and classical communication. By utilizing ground-state entanglement and notion of negative energy density region, energy is teleported without breaking any physical laws including causality and local energy conservation. Because not excited physical entity but classical information is transported in the protocol, the dissipation rate of energy in transport is expected to be strongly suppressed.
Linear chains of quantum scatterers are studied in the process of lengthening, which is treated and analysed as a discrete dynamical system defined over the manifold of scattering matrices. Elementary properties of such dynamics relate the transport through the chain to the spectral properties of individual scatterers. For a single-scattering channel case some new light is shed on known transport properties of disordered and noisy chains, whereas translationally invariant case can be studied analytically in terms of a simple deterministic dynamical map. The many-channel case was studied numeri…
Some of the recent developments concerning the propagation of quantum correlations across spin channels are reviewed. In particular, we focus on the improvement of the transport efficiency obtained by the manipulation of few energy parameters (either end-bond strengths or local magnetic fields) near the sending and receiving sites. We give a physically insightful description of various such schemes and discuss the transfer of both entanglement and of quantum discord.
Simulation of materials by using quantum processors is envisioned to be a major direction of development in quantum information science. Here we exploit the mathematical analogies between a triangular spin lattice with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya coupling on one edge and a three-level system driven by three fields in a loop configuation to emulate spin-transport effects. We show that the spin transport efficiency, seen in the three-level system as population transfer, is enhanced when the conditions for superadiabaticity are satisfied. We demonstrate experimentally that phenomena characteristic to s…
For spins chains to be useful for quantum information processing tasks, the interaction between the spin chain and its environment generally needs to be suppressed. In this paper, we propose the use of strong static and oscillating control fields in order to effectively remove the spin chain-environment interaction. We find that our control fields can also effectively transform the spin chain Hamiltonian. In particular, interaction terms which are absent in the original spin chain Hamiltonian appear in the time-averaged effective Hamiltonian once the control fields are applied, implying that s…
We study magnetization transport at high temperatures in several spin ladder systems as well as in next-nearest-neighbor coupled spin chains. In the integrable ladder considered we analytically show that the transport is ballistic in sectors with nonzero average magnetization, while numerical simulations of a nonequilibrium stationary setting indicate an anomalous transport in the zero magnetization (half-filling) sector. For other systems, isotropic Heisenberg ladder and spin chains, showing eigenlevel repulsion typical of quantum chaotic systems, numerical simulations indicate diffusive tran…
Linear chains of spins acting as quantum wires are a promising approach to achieve scalable quantum information processors. Nuclear spins in apatite crystals provide an ideal test-bed for the experimental study of quantum information transport, as they closely emulate a one-dimensional spin chain. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance techniques can be used to drive the spin chain dynamics and probe the accompanying transport mechanisms. Here we demonstrate initialization and readout capabilities in these spin chains, even in the absence of single-spin addressability. These control schemes enable prepari…
We show how quantized transport can be realized in Floquet chains through encapsulation of a chiral or helical shift. The resulting transport is immutable rather than topological in the sense that it neither requires a band gap nor is affected by arbitrarily strong perturbations. Transport is still characterized by topological quantities but encapsulation of the shift prevents topological phase transitions. To explore immutable transport we introduce the concept of a shiftbox, explain the relevant topological quantities both for momentum-space dispersions and real-space transport, and study mo…
The ability to transport quantum information across some distance can facilitate the design and operation of a quantum processor. One-dimensional spin chains provide a compact platform to realize scalable spin transport for a solid-state quantum computer. Here, we model odd-sized donor chains in silicon under a range of experimental non-idealities, including variability of donor position within the chain. We show that the tolerance against donor placement inaccuracies is greatly improved by operating the spin chain in a mode where the electrons are confined at the Si-SiO$_2$ interface. We then…
We study a model of nonequilibrium quantum transport of particles and energy in a many-body system connected to mesoscopic Fermi reservoirs (the so-called meso-reservoirs). We discuss the conservation laws of particles and energy within our setup as well as the transport properties of quasi-periodic and disordered chains.
We consider thermal transport between two reservoirs coupled by a quantum Ising chain as a model for non-equilibrium physics induced in quantum-critical many-body systems. By deriving rate equations based on exact expressions for the quasiparticle pairs generated during the transport, we observe signatures of the underlying quantum phase transition in the steady-state energy current already at finite reservoir temperatures.
We experimentally study energy transport in chains of trapped ions. We use a pulsed excitation scheme to rapidly add energy to the local motional mode of one of the ions in the chain. Subsequent energy readout allows us to determine how the excitation has propagated throughout the chain. We observe energy revivals that persist for many cycles. We study the behavior with an increasing number of ions of up to 37 in the chain, including a zig-zag configuration. The experimental results agree well with the theory of normal mode evolution. The described system provides an experimental toolbox for t…
We show that non-Hermiticity enables topological phases with unidirectional transport in one-dimensional Floquet chains. The topological signatures of these phases are non-contractible loops in the spectrum of the Floquet propagator that are separated by an imaginary gap. Such loops occur exclusively in non-Hermitian Floquet systems. We define the corresponding topological invariant as the winding number of the Floquet propagator relative to the imaginary gap. To relate topology to transport, we introduce the concept of regularized dynamics of non-Hermitian chains. We establish that, under the…
We study the dynamics of an initially thermalized spin chain in the quantum XY-model, after sudden coupling to a heat bath of lower temperature at one end of the chain. In the semi-classical limit we see an exponential decay of the system-bath heatflux by exact solution of the reduced dynamics. In the full quantum description however, we numerically find the heatflux to reach intermediate plateaus where it is approximately constant -- a phenomenon that we attribute to the finite speed of heat transport via spin waves.
We provide an explicit method for solving general markovian master equations for quadratic bosonic Hamiltonians with linear bath operators. As an example we consider a one-dimensional quantum harmonic oscillator chain coupled to thermal reservoirs at both ends of the chain. We derive an analytic solution of the Redfield master equation for homogeneous harmonic chain and recover classical results, namely, vanishing temperature gradient and constant heat current in the thermodynamic limit. In the case of the disordered gapped chains we observe universal heat current scaling independent of the ba…
We investigate the mechanism of heat conduction in ordered and disordered harmonic onedimensional chains within the quantum mechanical Langevin method. In the case of the disordered chains we find indications for normal heat conduction which means that there is a finite temperature gradient but we cannot clearly decide whether the heat resistance increases linearly with the chain length. Furthermore we observe characteristic quantum mechanical features like Bose-Einstein statistics of the occupation numbers of the normal modes, freezing of the heat conductivity and the influence of the entangl…
We study spin transport in a boundary driven XXZ spin chain. Driving at the chain boundaries is modeled by two additional spin chains prepared in oppositely polarized states. Emergent behavior, both in the transient dynamics and in the long-time quasi-steady state, is demonstrated. Time-dependent matrix-product-state simulations of the system-bath state show ballistic spin transport below the Heisenberg isotropic point. Indications of exponentially vanishing transport are found above the Heisenberg point for low energy initial states while the current decays asymptotically as a power law for h…
In this paper we investigate the spin currents and the von Neumann entropy (VNE) of an Heisenberg XXZ chain in contact with twisted XY-boundary magnetic reservoirs by means of the Lindblad master equation. Exact solutions for the stationary reduced density matrix are explicitly constructed for chains of small sizes by using a quantum symmetry operation of the system. These solutions are then used to investigate the optimal transport in the chain in terms of the VNE. As a result we show that the maximal spin current always occurs in the proximity of extrema of the VNE and for particular choices…
Here we show that a coherent random walk in a perfectly periodic chain of bosonic modes with designed loss can exhibit a variety of different anomalous transfer regimes in dependence on the initial state of the chain. In particular, for any given finite initial time-interval there is a set of initial states leading to a hyperballistic transport regime. Also, there are initial states allowing one to achieve a subdiffusive regime or even localization for a given time-interval, or change an asymptotic long-time diffusion rate. We show how these anomalous transport regimes can be practically reali…
We theoretically investigate the flow of the atomic excitations in a driven chiral-coupled atomic chain with nonreciprocal decay channels. This one-dimensional system allows infinite-range dipole-dipole interaction, and enables directional guided modes of scattered light. Under a weakly driven condition, we are able to simulate the transport properties of atomic excitations between the left and right parts of the chain. In the steady states, the transport is highly dependent on the equidistant positions of the ordered array, the excitation field detunings, and the directionality of such chiral…
We study high-temperature spin transport through an anisotropic spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain in which integrability is broken by a single impurity close to the center of the chain. For a finite impurity strength, the level spacing statistics of this model is known to be Wigner-Dyson. Our aim is to understand if this integrability breaking is manifested in the high-temperature spin transport. We focus first on the nonequilibrium steady state (NESS), where the chain is connected to spin baths that act as sources and sinks for spin excitations at the boundaries. Using a combination of open quantum s…
We address the problem of heat transport in a chain of coupled quantum harmonic oscillators, exposed to the influences of local environments of various nature, stressing the effects that the specific nature of the environment has on the phenomenology of the transport process. We study in detail the behavior of thermodynamically relevant quantities such as heat currents and mean energies of the oscillators, establishing rigorous analytical conditions for the existence of a steady state, whose features we analyse carefully. In particular we assess the conditions that should be faced to recover t…
In this work we study the heat transport in an XXZ spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain with homogeneous magnetic field, incoherently driven out of equilibrium by reservoirs at the boundaries. We focus on the effect of bulk dephasing (energy-dissipative) processes in different parameter regimes of the system. The non-equilibrium steady state of the chain is obtained by simulating its evolution under the corresponding Lindblad master equation, using the time evolving block decimation method. In the absence of dephasing, the heat transport is ballistic for weak interactions, while being diffusive in the st…
We study quantum transport properties of an open Heisenberg XXZ spin 1/2 chain driven by a pair of Lindblad jump operators satisfying a global `microcanonical' constraint, i.e. conserving the total magnetization. We will show that this system has an additional discrete symmetry which is particular to the Liouvillean description of the problem. Such symmetry reduces the dynamics even more than what would be expected in the standard Hilbert space formalism and establishes existence of multiple steady states. Interestingly, numerical simulations of the XXZ model suggest that a pair of distinct no…
We study dephasing-enhanced transport in boundary-driven quasi-periodic systems. Specifically we consider dephasing modelled by current preserving Lindblad dissipators acting on the non-interacting Aubry-André-Harper (AAH) and Fibonacci bulk systems. The former is known to undergo a critical localization transition with a suppression of ballistic transport above a critical value of the potential. At the critical point, the presence of non-ergodic extended states yields anomalous sub-diffusion. The Fibonacci model, on the other hand, yields anomalous transport with a continuously varying expone…
Numerical and analytic results have been used to characterize quantum transport in spin chains, showing the existence of both ballistic and diffusive motion. Experiments have shown that heat transfer is surprisingly always diffusive. The scattering from phonons and impurities have been postulated to be the two factors critical in causing the diffusive transport. In this work, we evaluate the transport process by incorporating a bath of phonons and impurities in order to understand the role played by each of the factors. While methods like time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (tD…
We analyze a chain of coupled nonlinear optical cavities driven by a coherent source of light localized at one end and subject to uniform dissipation. We characterize photon transport by studying the populations and the photon correlations as a function of position. When complemented with input-output theory, these quantities provide direct information about photon transmission through the system. The position of single- and multi-photon resonances directly reflect the structure of the many-body energy levels. This shows how a study of transport along a coupled cavity array can provide rich in…
We study the interplay between disorder and light-matter coupling by considering a disordered one-dimensional chain of lossy dipoles coupled to a multimode optical cavity, through a microscopically derived Hamiltonian. Such a system, hosting polaritonic excitations, may be realized experimentally in a wide range of platforms under strong light-matter coupling. By analyzing both the eigenspectrum and the driven-dissipative transport properties of our system, we find that in the strong-coupling regime, increasing disorder leads almost uncoupled dark states to acquire a photonic part, allowing th…
We investigate the transport of excitations through a chain of atoms with non-local dissipation introduced through coupling to additional short-lived states. The system is described by an effective spin-1/2 model where the ratio of the exchange interaction strength to the reservoir coupling strength determines the type of transport, including coherent exciton motion, incoherent hopping and a regime in which an emergent length scale leads to a preferred hopping distance far beyond nearest neighbors. For multiple impurities, the dissipation gives rise to strong nearest-neighbor correlations and …
We show that using a slightly modified XX model for a spin-1/2 chain, one can transmit almost perfectly a maximally entangled two-qubit state from one end of the chain to the other one. This is accomplished without external fields or modulation of the coupling constants among the qubits. We also show that this strategy works for any size of the chain and is relatively robust to imperfections in the coupling constants among the qubits belonging to the chain. Actually, under certain scenarios of small disorder, we obtain better results than those predicted by the optimal ordered and noiseless ca…
We use non-equilibrium steady states to study the effect of dissipation-assisted operator evolution (DAOE) on the scaling behavior of transport in one-dimensional spin chains. We consider three models in the XXZ family: the XXZ model with staggered anisotropy, which is chaotic; XXZ model with no external field and tunable interaction, which is Bethe ansatz integrable and (in the zero interaction limit) free fermion integrable; and the disordered XY model, which is free-fermion integrable and Anderson localized. We find evidence that DAOE's effect on transport is controlled by its effect on the…
This review summarizes recent advances in our understanding of anomalous transport in spin chains, viewed through the lens of integrability. Numerical advances, based on tensor-network methods, have shown that transport in many canonical integrable spin chains -- most famously the Heisenberg model -- is anomalous. Concurrently, the framework of generalized hydrodynamics has been extended to explain some of the mechanisms underlying anomalous transport. We present what is currently understood about these mechanisms, and discuss how they resemble (and differ from) the mechanisms for anomalous tr…
Motivated by experiments on chains of superconducting qubits, we consider the dynamics of a classical Klein-Gordon chain coupled to coherent driving and subject to dissipation solely at its boundaries. As the strength of the boundary driving is increased, this minimal classical model recovers the main features of the "dissipative phase transition" seen experimentally. Between the transmitting and non-transmitting regimes on either side of this transition (which support ballistic and diffusive energy transport respectively), we observe additional dynamical regimes of interest. These include a r…
Explicit matrix product ansatz is presented, in first two orders in the (weak) coupling parameter, for the non-equilibrium steady state of the homogeneous, nearest neighbor Heisenberg XXZ spin-1/2 chain driven by Lindblad operators which act only at the edges of the chain. The first order of the density operator becomes in thermodynamic limit an exact pseudo-local conservation law and yields -- via Mazur inequality -- a rigorous lower bound on the high temperature spin Drude weight. Such Mazur bound is a non-vanishing fractal function of the anisotropy parameter Delta for |Delta|<1.
Transport phenomena are central to physics, and transport in the many-body and fully-quantum regime is attracting an increasing amount of attention. It has been recently revealed that some quantum spin chains support ballistic transport of excitations at all energies. However, when joining two semi-infinite ballistic parts, such as the XX and XXZ spin-1/2 models, our understanding suddenly becomes less established. Employing a matrix-product-state ansatz of the wavefunction, we study the relaxation dynamics in this latter case. Here we show that it takes place inside a light cone, within which…
Quantum integrable systems, such as the interacting Bose gas in one dimension and the XXZ quantum spin chain, have an extensive number of local conserved quantities that endow them with exotic thermalization and transport properties. We discuss recently introduced hydrodynamic approaches for such integrable systems from the viewpoint of kinetic theory and extend the previous works by proposing a numerical scheme to solve the hydrodynamic equations for finite times and arbitrary locally equilibrated initial conditions. We then discuss how such methods can be applied to describe non-equilibrium …
