A popular model of decoherence based on the linear coupling to harmonic oscillator heat baths is analized and shown to be inappropriate in the regime where decoherence dominates over energy dissipation, called pure decoherence regime. The similar mechanism essentially related to the energy conservation implies that, on the contrary to the recent conjectures, chaotic environments can be less efficient decoherers than regular ones. Finally, the elastic scattering mechanism is advocated as the simplest source of pure decoherence.
We study the behavior of Quantum Darwinism (Zurek, [8]) within the iterative, random unitary operations qubit-model of pure decoherence (Novotny et al, [6]). We conclude that Quantum Darwinism, which describes the quantum mechanical evolution of an open system S from the point of view of its environment E, is not a generic phenomenon, but depends on the specific form of input states and on the type of S-E-interactions. Furthermore, we show that within the random unitary model the concept of Quantum Darwinism enables one to explicitly construct and specify artificial input states of environment…
In standard quantum theory, the ideas of information-entropy and of pure states are closely linked. States are represented by density matrices $ρ$ on a Hilbert space and the information-entropy $-tr(ρ\logρ)$ is minimised on pure states (pure states are the vertices of the boundary of the convex set of states). The space of decoherence functions in the consistent histories approach to generalised quantum theory is also a convex set. However, by showing that every decoherence function can be written as a convex combination of two other decoherence functions we demonstrate that there are no `pure…
We investigate the patterns in distributions of localizable entanglement over a pair of qubits for random multi-qubit pure states. We observe that the mean of localizable entanglement increases gradually with increasing the number of qubits of random pure states while the standard deviation of the distribution decreases. The effects on the distributions, when the random pure multi-qubit states are subjected to local as well as global noisy channels, are also investigated. Unlike the noiseless scenario, the average value of the localizable entanglement remains almost constant with the increase …
Decoherence is believed to deteriorate the ability of a purification scheme that is based on the idea of driving a system to a pure state by repeatedly measuring another system in interaction with the former and hinder for a pure state to be extracted asymptotically. Nevertheless, we find a way out of this difficulty by deriving an analytic expression of the reduced density matrix for a two-qubit system immersed in a bath. It is shown that we can still extract a pure state if the environment brings about only dephasing effects. In addition, for a dissipative environment, there is a possibility…
The new process of quantum-injection into an optical parametric amplifier operating in entangled configuration is adopted to amplify into a large dimensionality spin 1/2 Hilbert space the quantum entanglement and superposition properties of the photon-couples generated by parametric down-conversion. The structure of the Wigner function and of the field's correlation functions shows a decoherence-free, multiphoton Schroedinger-cat behaviour of the emitted field which is largely detectable against the squeezed-vacuum noise. Furthermore, owing to its entanglement character, the system is found to…
Local and global approaches to the thermodynamics of pure decoherence processes in open quantum systems
University of Freiburg（弗赖堡大学）；Università degli Studi di Milano（米兰大学）；INFN, Sezione di Milano（意大利国家核物理研究所米兰分部）；EUCOR Centre for Quantum Science and Quantum Computing, University of Freiburg（弗赖堡大学EUCOR量子科学与量子计算中心）
Based on a generic quantum open system model, we study the geometric nature of decoherence by defining a complex-valued geometric phase through stochastic pure states describing non-unitary, non-cyclic and non-adiabatic evolutions. The ensemble average of the complex geometric phases for the pure stochastic states yields a conventional geometric phase together with an amplitude factor. We show that the decoherence process described by the decaying amplitude can be a geometric quantity independent of the system's dynamics. It is a remarkable fact that the geometric phase of a quantum system can…
We uncover two microscopic physical settings with significant pure spin decoherence. First, for quantum dots (QD) electrostatically confined in two-dimensional hole gas, decoherence comes from qubit spin-orbit (SO) coupling to phonons, whose decay due to free charge carriers in contacts is described by Ohmic weighted phonon spectral function. We derive significant SO interactions affecting holes with origin and symmetry distinct from that of conventionally considered Dresselhaus and Rashba terms. In the second setting of electron or hole QDs coupled to a linear chain of atoms, decoherence is d…
We consider a continuous measurement of a two-level system (double-dot) by weakly coupled detector (tunnel point contact nearby). While usual treatment leads to the gradual system decoherence due to the measurement, we show that the knowledge of the measurement result can restore the pure wavefunction at any time (this can be experimentally verified). The formalism allows to write a simple Langevin equation for the random evolution of the system density matrix which is reflected and caused by the stochastic detector output. Gradual wavefunction ``collapse'' and quantum Zeno effect are naturall…
Uhlmann's mixed state geometric phase [Rep. Math. Phys. {\bf 24}, 229 (1986)] is analyzed in the case of a qubit affected by isotropic decoherence treated in the Markovian approximation. It is demonstrated that this phase decreases rapidly with increasing decoherence rate and that it is most fragile to weak decoherence for pure or nearly pure initial states. In the unitary case, we compare Uhlmann's geometric phase for mixed states with that occurring in standard Mach-Zehnder interferometry [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 85}, 2845 (2000)] and show that the latter is more robust to reduction in the len…
We study the dynamics of pure phase decoherence for a particle hopping around an N-site ring, coupled both to a spin bath and to an Aharonov-Bohm flux which threads the ring. Analytic results are found for the dynamics of the influence functional and of the reduced density matrix of the particle, both for initial single wave-packet states, and for states split initially into 2 separate wave-packets moving at different velocities. We also give results for the dynamics of the current as a function of time.
We consider a continuous measurement of a two-level system (double-dot) by weakly coupled detector (tunnel point contact nearby). While usual treatment leads to the gradual system decoherence due to the measurement, we show that the knowledge of the measurement result can restore the pure wavefunction at any time (this can be experimentally verified). The formalism allows to write a simple Langevin equation for the random evolution of the system density matrix which is reflected and caused by the stochastic detector output. Gradual wavefunction ``collapse'' and quantum Zeno effect are naturall…
In spin-based architectures of quantum devices, the hyperfine interaction between the electron spin qubit and the nuclear spin environment remains one of the main sources of decoherence. This paper provides a short review of the current advances in the theoretical description of the qubit decoherence dynamics. Next, we study the qubit-environment entanglement using negativity as its measure. For an initial maximally mixed state of the environment, we study negativity dynamics as a function of environment size, changing the numbers of environmental nuclei and the total spin of the nuclei. Furth…
We consider a class of entangled states of a quantum system (S) and a second system (A) where pure states of the former are correlated with mixed states of the latter, and work out the entanglement measure with reference to the nearest separable state. Such `pure-mixed' entanglement is expected when the system S interacts with a macroscopic measuring apparatus in a quantum measurement, where the quantum correlation is destroyed in the process of environment-induced decoherence whereafter only the classical correlation between S and A remains, the latter being large compared to the former. We p…
In systems considered for quantum computing, i.e., for control of quantum dynamics with the goal of processing information coherently, decoherence and deviation from pure quantum states, are the main obstacles to fault-tolerant error correction. At low temperatures, usually assumed in quantum computing designs, some of the accepted approaches to evaluation of relaxation mechanisms break down. We develop a new general formalism for estimation of decoherence at short times, appropriate for evaluation of quantum computing architectures.
It is known that maximally entangled Bell state and three-qubit W-type states are very useful in various quantum information processing task. Thus the problem of preparation of these type of states is very important in quantum information theory. But the factor which prohibit the generation of the above mentioned pure states shared between two and three distant partners is decoherence. When we send one qubit, from a two qubit state, through decoherence channel like amplitude damping channel, the purity of the qubit is lost and it ends up with a mixed state. Therefore it is very difficult to ke…
Feedback control is expected to considerably protect quantum states against decoherence caused by interaction between the system and environment. Especially, Markovian feedback scheme developed by Wiseman can modify the properties of decoherence and eventually recover the purity of the steadystate of the corresponding master equation. This paper provides a condition for which the modified master equation has a pure steady state. By applying this condition to a two-qubit system, we obtain a complete parametrization of the feedback Hamiltonian such that the steady state becomes a maximally entan…
We study the quantum Fisher information (QFI) of W states analytically with respect to SU(2) rotations in the basic decoherence channels i.e. depolarizing (DPC), amplitude damping (ADC) and phase damping (PDC), and present the interesting behavior of QFI of W states, especially when compared to that of GHZ states [Ma et al., Phys. Rev. A, 84, 022302 (2011)]. We find that when initially pure W states are under decoherence, i) DPC: as decoherence starts and increases, QFI smoothly decays; ii) ADC: just as decoherence starts, QFI exhibits a sudden drop to the shot noise level and as decoherence i…
Understanding decoherence processes is crucial in the study of open quantum systems. In this paper, we discuss the mechanism of pure-dephasing process with a newly proposed boson-boson model, namely, a bosonic field coupled to another bosonic bath in thermal equilibrium. Our model is fully solvable and can reproduce the pure-dephasing process which is usually described by the well-known spin-boson model, therefore offering a new perspective to understanding decoherence processes in open quantum systems of high dimension. We also show that this model admits a generically non-Markovian dynamics …
We put forward a new, versatile and highly-scalable experimental setup for the realization of discrete two-dimensional quantum random walks with a single-qubit coin and tunable degree of decoherence. The proposed scheme makes use of a small number of simple optical components arranged in a multi-path Mach-Zehnder-like configuration, where a weak coherent state with average photon number of 1 is injected. Environmental effects (decoherence) are generated by a spatial light modulator, which introduces pure dephasing in the transverse spatial plane, perpendicular to the direction of propagation o…
Port-based teleportation under pure-dephasing decoherence
Center for Theoretical Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences（波兰科学院理论物理中心）；International Centre for Theory of Quantum Technologies, University of Gdańsk（格但斯克大学量子技术理论国际中心）
We present a general formulation to suppress pure dephasing by multipulse control. The formula is free from a specific form of interaction and is expressed in terms of the correlation function of arbitrary system-reservoir interaction.
A critical step in experimental quantum information processing (QIP) is to implement control of quantum systems protected against decoherence via informational encodings, such as quantum error correcting codes, noiseless subsystems and decoherence free subspaces. These encodings lead to the promise of fault tolerant QIP, but they come at the expense of resource overheads. Part of the challenge in studying control over multiple logical qubits, is that QIP test-beds have not had sufficient resources to analyze encodings beyond the simplest ones. The most relevant resources are the number of avai…
Quantum decoherence plays a pivotal role in the dynamical description of the quantum-to-classical transition and is the main impediment to the realization of devices for quantum information processing. This paper gives an overview of the theory and experimental observation of the decoherence mechanism. We introduce the essential concepts and the mathematical formalism of decoherence, focusing on the picture of the decoherence process as a continuous monitoring of a quantum system by its environment. We review several classes of decoherence models and discuss the description of the decoherence …
A protocol for considering decoherence in quantum games is presented. Results for two-player, two-strategy quantum games subject to decoherence are derived and some specific examples are given. Decoherence in other types of quantum games is also considered. As expected, the advantage that a quantum player achieves over a player restricted to classical strategies is diminished for increasing decoherence but only vanishes in the limit of maximum decoherence.
We study a quantum repeater which is based on decoherence free quantum gates recently proposed by Klein et al. [Phys. Rev. A 73, 012332 (2006)]. A number of operations on the decoherence free subspace in this scheme makes use of an ancilla qubit, which undergoes dephasing and thus introduces decoherence to the system. We examine how this decoherence affects entanglement swapping and purification as well as the performance of a quantum repeater. We compare the decoherence free quantum repeater with a quantum repeater based on qubits that are subject to decoherence and show that it outperforms t…
Quantum Fourier transform is of primary importance in many quantum algorithms. In order to eliminate the destructive effects of decoherence induced by couplings between the quantum system and its environment, we propose a robust scheme for quantum Fourier transform over the intrinsic decoherence-free subspaces. The scheme is then applied to the circuit design of quantum Fourier transform over quantum networks under collective decoherence. The encoding efficiency and possible improvements are also discussed.
Taming decoherence is essential in realizing quantum computation and quantum communication. Here we experimentally demonstrate that decoherence due to amplitude damping can be suppressed by exploiting quantum measurement reversal in which a weak measurement and the reversing measurement are introduced before and after the decoherence channel, respectively. We have also investigated the trade-off relation between the degree of decoherence suppression and the channel transmittance.
The following statements belonging to the folklore of the theory of environmental decoherence are shown to be incorrect: 1) linear coupling to harmonic oscillator bath is a universal model of decoherence, 2) chaotic environments are more efficient decoherers.
A direct classical analog of the quantum dynamics of intrinsic decoherence in Hamiltonian systems, characterized by the time dependence of the linear entropy of the reduced density operator, is introduced. The similarities and differences between the classical and quantum decoherence dynamics of an initial quantum state are exposed using both analytical and computational results. In particular, the classicality of early-time intrinsic decoherence dynamics is explored analytically using a second-order perturbative treatment, and an interesting connection between decoherence rates and the stabil…
It is known that a macroscopic quantum superposition (MQS), when it is exposed to environment, decoheres at a rate scaling with the separation of its component states in phase space. This is more or less consistent with the well known proposition that a more macroscopic quantum state is reduced more quickly to a classical state in general. Effects of initial mixedness, however, on the subsequent decoherence of MQSs have been less known. In this paper, we study the evolution of a highly mixed MQS interacting with an environment, and compare it with that of a pure MQS having the same size of the…
We describe quantum controllability under the influences of the quantum decoherence induced by the quantum control itself. It is shown that, when the controller is considered as a quantum system, it will entangle with its controlled system and then cause quantum decoherence in the controlled system. In competition with this induced decoherence, the controllability will be limited by some uncertainty relation in a well-armed quantum control process. In association with the phase uncertainty and the standard quantum limit, a general model is studied to demonstrate the possibility of realizing a …
I give a pedagogical overview of decoherence and its role in providing a dynamical account of the quantum-to-classical transition. The formalism and concepts of decoherence theory are reviewed, followed by a survey of master equations and decoherence models. I also discuss methods for mitigating decoherence in quantum information processing and describe selected experimental investigations of decoherence processes.
The possible effect of environment on the efficiency of a quantum algorithm is considered explicitely. It is illustrated through the example of Shor's prime factorization algorithm that this effect may be disastrous. The influence of environment on quantum computation is probed on the basis of its analogy to the problem of wave function collapse in quantum measurement.Techniques from the Hepp-Colemen approach and its generalization are used to deal with decoherence problems in quantum computation including dynamic mechanism of decoherence, quantum error avoiding tricks and calculation of decoh…
Coupling to the environment typically suppresses quantum properties of physical systems via decoherence mechanisms. This is one of the main obstacles in practical implementations of quantum protocols. In this work we show how decoherence effects can be reversed/suppressed during quantum teleportation in a network scenario. Treating the environment quantumly, we show that under a general pure dephasing coupling, performing a second teleportation step can probabilistically reverse the decoherence effects if certain commutativity conditions hold. This effect is purely quantum and most pronounced …
We propose and analyse a robust quantum state transfer protocol by the use of a combination of coherent quantum coupling and decoherence-free subspaces in a coupled quantum spin chain. Under decoherence, an arbitrary unknown quantum state embedded in a decoherence-free subspace can be perfectly transferred through a noisy channel being weakly coupled to two end registers. The method protects quantum information from both the channel noise and the environmental decoherence. A special case of utilizing two physical qubits to encode one logical qubit is considered as an example and the robustness…
It is shown how environmental decoherence plays an essential and constructive role in a quantum mechanical theory of brain process that has significant explanatory power.
Griffiths' ``quantum trajectories'' formalism is extended to describe weak decoherence. The decoherence conditions are shown to severely limit the complexity of histories composed of fine-grained events.
A direct classical analog of quantum decoherence is introduced. Similarities and differences between decoherence dynamics examined quantum mechanically and classically are exposed via a second-order perturbative treatment and via a strong decoherence theory, showing a strong dependence on the nature of the system-environment coupling. For example, for the traditionally assumed linear coupling, the classical and quantum results are shown to be in exact agreement.
Decoherence in quantum computer memory due to the inevitable coupling to the external environment is examined. We take the assumption that all quantum bits (qubits) interact with the same environment rather than the assumption of separate environments for different qubits. It is found that the qubits are decohered collectively. For some kinds of entangled input states, no decoherence occurs at all in the memory even if the qubits are interacting with the environment. Based on this phenomenon, a scheme is proposed for reducing the collective decoherence. We also discuss possible implications of…
In the framework of the Lindblad theory for open quantum systems, we determine the degree of quantum decoherence of a harmonic oscillator interacting with a thermal bath. It is found that the system manifests a quantum decoherence which is more and more significant in time. We calculate also the decoherence time scale and analyze the transition from quantum to classical behaviour of the considered system.
We study the problem of driving an unknown initial mixed quantum state onto a known pure state without using unitary transformations. This can be achieved, in an efficient manner, with the help of sequential measurements on at least two unbiased bases. However here we found that, when the system is affected by a decoherence mechanism, only one observable is required in order to achieve the same goal. In this way the decoherence can assist the process. We show that, depending on the sort of decoherence, the process can converge faster or slower than the method implemented by means of two comple…
In this paper we study decoherence in the quantum walk on the line. We generalize the method of decoherent coin quantum walk, introduced by Brun et al [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 67}, 32304 (2003)]. Our analytical expressions are applicable for all kinds of decoherence. As an example of the coin-position decoherence, we study the broken line quantum walk and compare our results with the numerical one. We also show that our analytical results reduce to the Brun formalism when only the coin is subjected to decoherence.
When the nonlinearity of nanomechanical resonator is not negligible, the quantum decoherence of charge qubit is studied analytically. Using nonlinear Jaynes-Cummings model, one explores the possibility of being quantum data bus for nonlinear nanomechanical resonator, the nonlinearity destroys the dynamical quantum information-storage and maintains the revival of quantum coherence of charge qubit. With the calculation of decoherence factor, we demonstrate the influence of the nonlinearity of nanomechanical resonator on engineered decoherence of charge qubit.
We have studied how decoherence affects a quantum walk on the line. As expected, it is highly sensitive, consisting as it does of an extremely delocalized particle. We obtain an expression for the rate at which the standard deviation falls from the quantum value as decoherence increases and show that it is proportional to the number of decoherence "events" occuring during the walk.
To resist decoherence from destroying the phase factor of qubit state, it is important to use decoherence-free states for processing, transmitting and storing quantum information in quantum computing and quantum communication. We propose a practical scheme using four atoms with decoherence-free states in a single-mode cavity to realize the entanglement and fundamental quantum logic gates. The transmission of quantum information can be made directly from one atom to another, in which the cavity is only virtually excited. The possible application and the experimental requirement of our proposal …
Two initially correlated coherent states, each interacting with its own independent dissipative environment exhibit a sudden transition from classical to quantum decoherence. This change in the dynamics is a turning point in the decoherence, in the sense that depending on the average number of photons of each cavity, decoherence can even be suppressed. Indeed, the quantum state is time-independent for a time span in the mesoscopic regime, revealing a decoherence-free subspace. Furthermore, the absence of decoherence is manifested in the apparition of a metastable pointer state basis.
Marshall et al. gedanken experiment of the quantum superpposition of a mirror (oscilating part of a Michelson interferometer) interacting with single photon is consequently interpreted by relative decoherence.Such relative decoherence (based on the spontaneous superposition breaking (effective hiding)) on the photon (quantum object) caused by mirror (measurement device) is sufficient to model real measurement.
New feasible cavity QED experiment is proposed to analyse reversible quantum decoherence in consequence of quantum complementarity and entanglement. Utilizing the phase selective manipulations with enviroment, it is demonstrated how the complementarity particularly induces a preservation of visibility, whereas quantum decoherence is more progressive due to pronounced entanglement between system and enviroment. This effect can be directly observed using the proposed cavity QED measurements.
In the framework of the Lindblad theory for open quantum systems, we determine the degree of quantum decoherence of a harmonic oscillator interacting with a thermal bath. It is found that the system manifests a quantum decoherence which is more and more significant in time. We also calculate the decoherence time and show that it has the same scale as the time after which thermal fluctuations become comparable with quantum fluctuations.
An open ended spin chain can serves as a quantum data bus for the coherent transfer of quantum state information. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency of such quantum spin channels which work in a decoherence environment. Our results show that, the decoherence will significantly reduce the fidelity of quantum communication through the spin channels. Generally speaking, as the distance increases, the decoherence effects become more serious, which will put some constraints on the spin chains for long distance quantum state transfer.
We suggest that propagation of nonclassical light in lattices of optical waveguides can provide a laboratory tool to simulate quantum decoherence phenomena with high non-Markovian features. As examples, we study decoherence of optical Schrödinger cats in a lattice that mimics a dissipative quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a quantum bath, showing fractional decoherence in the strong coupling regime, and Bloch oscillations of optical Schrödinger cats, where damped revivals of the coherence can be observed.
We propose a new approach to the implementation of quantum gates in which decoherence during the gate operations is strongly reduced. This is achieved by making use of an environment induced quantum Zeno effect that confines the dynamics effectively to a decoherence-free subspace.
