The extension of the notion of quantum fidelity from the state-space level to the operator one can be used to study environment-induced decoherence. state-dependent operator fidelity sucepti- bility (OFS), the leading order term for slightly different operator parameters, is shown to have a nontrivial behavior when the environment is at critical points. Two different contributions to OFS are identified which have distinct physical origins and temporal dependence. Exact results for the finite-temperature decoherence caused by a bath described by the Ising model in transverse field are obtained.
We introduce the operator fidelity and propose to use its susceptibility for characterizing the sensitivity of quantum systems to perturbations. Two typical models are addressed: one is the transverse Ising model exhibiting a quantum phase transition, and the other is the one dimensional Heisenberg spin chain with next-nearest-neighbor interactions, which has the degeneracy. It is revealed that the operator fidelity susceptibility is a good indicator of quantum criticality regardless of the system degeneracy.
We study the critical properties of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick Model in terms of the fidelity susceptibility. By using the Holstein-Primakoff transformation, we obtain explicitly the critical exponent of the fidelity susceptibility around the second-order quantum phase transition point. Our results provide a rare analytical case for the fidelity susceptibility in describing the universality class in quantum critical behavior. The different critical exponents in two phases are non-trivial results, indicating the fidelity susceptibility is not always extensive.
The notion of fidelity susceptibility, introduced within the context of quantum metric tensor, has been an important quantity to characterize the criticality near quantum phase transitions. We demonstrate that for topological phase transitions in Dirac models, provided the momentum space is treated as the manifold of the quantum metric, the fidelity susceptibility coincides with the curvature function whose integration gives the topological invariant. Thus the quantum criticality of the curvature function near a topological phase transition also describes the criticality of the fidelity suscep…
In idealized models of a quantum register and its environment, quantum information can be stored indefinitely by encoding it into a decoherence-free subspace (DFS). Nevertheless, perturbations to the idealized register-environment coupling will cause decoherence in any realistic setting. Expanding a measure for state preservation, the dynamical fidelity, in powers of the strength of the perturbations, we prove stability to linear order is a generic property of quantum state evolution. The effect of noise perturbation is quantified by a concise expression for the strength of the quadratic, lead…
We propose an optimal method exploiting second order quantum phase transitions to perform high precision measurements of the control parameter at criticality. Our approach accesses the high fidelity susceptibility via the measurement of first- and second-moments of the order parameter and overcomes the difficulties of existing methods based on the overlap between nearby quantum states, which is hardly detectable in many-body systems. We experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of the method with a Bose-Einstein condensate undergoing a symmetry-breaking quantum phase transition as a function …
We study the fidelity susceptibility of two SU(2)-invariant reduced density matrices. Due to the commuting property of these matrices, analytical results for reduced fidelity susceptibility are obtained and can be applied to study quantum phase transitions in SU(2)-invariant systems. As an example, we analyze the quantum criticality of the spin-one bilinear-biquadratic model via the fidelity approach.
We show gapped critical environment could remarkably prevent an enhanced decay of decoherence factor and quantum correlations at the critical point, which is nontrivially different from the ones in a gapless critical environment (Quan, et.al Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{96}, 140604 (2006)). The quantum correlations display very fast decaying to their local minimum at the critical point while maximum decaying occurs away from this point. In particular, our results imply that collapse of decoherence factor is not indicator of a quantum phase transition of environment as opposed to what happens in a …
We study the dynamic sensitivity of the quantum Rabi model, which exhibits quantum criticality in the finite-component-system case. This dynamic sensitivity can be detected by introducing an auxiliary two-level atom far-off-resonantly coupled to the cavity field of the quantum Rabi model. We find that when the quantum Rabi model goes through the critical point, the auxiliary atom experiences a sudden decoherence, which can be characterised by a sharp decay of the Loschmidt echo. Our scheme will provide a reliable way to observe quantum phase transition in ultrastrongly coupled quantum systems.
A phenomenon of a periodic staircase of macroscopic jumps in the admitted magnetic field has been observed, as the magnitude of an externally applied magnetic field is smoothly increased or decreased upon a superconducting (SC) loop of type II niobium-titanium wire which is coated with a non-superconducting layer of copper. Large temperature spikes were observed to occur simultaneously with the jumps, suggesting brief transitions to the normal state, caused by en masse motions of Abrikosov vortices. An experiment that exploits this phenomenon to explore the global decoherence of a large superc…
A universal approach to decoherence control combined with quantum estimation theory reveals a critical behavior, akin to a phase transition, of the information obtainable by a qubit probe concerning the memory time of environmental fluctuations. This criticality emerges only when the probe is subject to dynamical control. It gives rise to a sharp transition between two dynamical phases characterized by either a short or long memory time compared to the probing time. This phase-transition of the environmental information is a fundamental feature that facilitates the attainment of the highest es…
We study decoherence induced by a dynamic environment undergoing a quantum phase transition. Environment's susceptibility to perturbations - and, consequently, efficiency of decoherence - is amplified near a critical point. Over and above this near-critical susceptibility increase, we show that decoherence is dramatically enhanced by non-equilibrium critical dynamics of the environment. We derive a simple expression relating decoherence to the universal critical exponents exhibiting deep connections with the theory of topological defect creation in non-equilibrium phase transitions.
Based on the obtained exact results we systematically study the quench dynamics of a one-dimensional spin-1/2 transverse field Ising model with zero- and finite-temperature initial states. We focus on the magnetization of the system after a sudden change of the external field and a coherent time-evolution process. With a zero-temperature initial state, the quench magnetic susceptibility as a function of the initial field strength exhibits strongly similar scaling behaviors to those of the static magnetic susceptibility, and the quench magnetic susceptibility as a function of the final field st…
We study the quantum phase transitions in the two-dimensional spin-orbit models in terms of fidelity susceptibility and reduced fidelity susceptibility. An order-to-order phase transition is identified by fidelity susceptibility in the two-dimensional Heisenberg XXZ model with Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction on a square lattice. The finite size scaling of fidelity susceptibility shows a power-law divergence at criticality, which indicates the quantum phase transition is of second order. Two distinct types of quantum phase transitions are witnessed by fidelity susceptibility in Kitaev-Heisenbe…
We introduce a coherence susceptibility method, based on the fact that it signals quantum fluctuations, for identifying quantum phase transitions, which are induced by quantum fluctuations. This method requires no prior knowledge of order parameter, and there is no need for careful considerations concerning the choice of a bipartition of the system. It can identify different types of quantum phase transition points exactly. At finite temperatures, where quantum criticality is influenced by thermal fluctuations, our method can pinpoint the temperature frame of quantum criticality, which perfect…
We report on the observation of quantum criticality forming at the transition point between topological Anderson insulator phases in a one-dimensional photonic quantum walk with spin. The walker's probability distribution reveals a time-staggered profile of the dynamical spin-susceptibility, recently suggested as a smoking gun signature for topological Anderson criticality in the chiral symmetry class AIII. Controlled breaking of phase coherence removes the signal, revealing its origin in quantum coherence.
We investigate the quantum temporal steering (TS), i.e., a temporal analogue of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering, in a dephasing channel which is modeled by a central spin half surrounded by a spin-1/2 \textit{XY} chain where quantum phase transition happens. The TS parameter $S_{\text{TS}}$ and the TS weight $W_{\text{TS}}$ are employed to characterize the TS dynamics. We analytically obtain the dependence of $S_{\text{TS}}$ on the decoherence factor. The numerical results show an obvious suppression of $S_{\text{TS}}$ and $W_{\text{TS}}$ when the \textit{XY} chain approaches to the critical …
The distribution and processing of quantum entanglement form the basis of quantum communication and quantum computing. The realization of the two is difficult because quantum information inherently has a high susceptibility to decoherence, i.e. to uncontrollable information loss to the environment. For entanglement distribution, a proposed solution to this problem is capable of fully eliminating decoherence; namely iterative entanglement distillation. This approach builds on a large number of distillation steps each of which extracts a number of weakly decohered entangled states from a larger …
The phase diagram of a quantum XY spin chain with Gaussian-distributed random anisotropies and transverse fields is investigated, with focus on the fidelity susceptibility, a recently introduced quantum information theoretical measure. Monitoring the finite-size scaling of the probability distribution of this quantity as well as its average and typical values, we detect a disorder-induced disappearance of criticality and the emergence of Griffiths phases in this model. It is found that the fidelity susceptibility is not self-averaging near the disorder-free quantum critical lines. At the Ising…
The diverging responses to parameter variations of systems at quantum critical points motivate schemes of quantum metrology that feature sub-Heisenberg scaling of the sensitivity with the system size (e.g., the number of particles). This sensitivity enhancement is fundamentally rooted in the formation of Schrödinger cat states, or macroscopic superposition states at the quantum critical points. The cat states, however, are fragile to decoherence caused by local noises on individual particles or coupling to local environments, since the local decoherence of any particle would cause the collapse…
Promising applications of the anisotropic quantum Rabi model (AQRM) in broad parameter ranges are explored, which is realized with superconducting flux qubits simultaneously driven by two-tone time-dependent magnetic fields. Regarding the quantum phase transitions (QPTs), with assistant of fidelity susceptibility, we extract the scaling functions and the critical exponents, with which the universal scaling of the cumulant ratio is captured with rescaling of the parameters due to the anisotropy. Moreover, a fixed point of the cumulant ratio is predicted at the critical point of the AQRM. In res…
We compare the irreversible work produced in an infinitesimal sudden quench of a quantum system at zero temperature with its ground state fidelity susceptibility, giving an explicit relation between the two quantities. We find that the former is proportional to the latter but for an extra term appearing in the irreversible work which includes also contributions from the excited states. We calculate explicitly the two quantities in the case of the quantum Ising chain, showing that at criticality they exhibit different scaling behavior. The irreversible work, rescaled by square of the quench's a…
We study a model of frustration of decoherence in an open quantum system. Contrary to other dissipative ohmic impurity models, such as the Kondo model or the dissipative two-level system, the impurity model discussed here never presents overdamped dynamics even for strong coupling to the environment. We show that this unusual effect has its origins in the quantum mechanical nature of the coupling between the quantum impurity and the environment. We study the problem using analytic and numerical renormalization group methods and obtain expressions for the frequency and temperature dependence of…
We consider a dynamic protocol for quantum many-body systems, which enables to study the interplay between unitary Hamiltonian driving and random local projective measurements. While the unitary dynamics tends to increase entanglement, local measurements tend to disentangle, thus favoring decoherence. Close to a quantum transition where the system develops critical correlations with diverging length scales, the competition of the two drivings is analyzed within a dynamic scaling framework, allowing us to identify a regime (dynamic scaling limit) where the two mechanisms develop a nontrivial in…
We study the fidelity susceptibility in an antiferromagnetic spin-1 XXZ chain numerically. By using the density-matrix renormalization group method, the effects of the alternating single-site anisotropy $D$ on fidelity susceptibility are investigated. Its relation with the quantum phase transition is analyzed. It is found that the quantum phase transition from the Haldane spin liquid to periodic Néel spin solid can be well characterized by the fidelity. Finite size scaling of fidelity susceptibility shows a power-law divergence at criticality, which indicates the quantum phase transition is of…
Quantum-Enhanced Atomic Sensor via Spin Nonequilibrium Criticality
School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学物理与天文学院）；Quantum Institute for Light and Atoms, School of Physics, East China Normal University（华东师范大学物理学院光与原子量子研究所）；Shanghai Branch, Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室上海分部）；Tsung-Dao Lee institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学李政道研究所）；Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University（山西大学极端光学协同创新中心）；Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Sciences（上海量子科学研究中心）
Quantum systems that undergo quantum phase transitions exhibit divergent susceptibility and can be exploited as probes to estimate physical parameters. We generalize the dynamic framework for criticality-enhanced quantum sensing by the quantum Rabi model (QRM) to its anisotropic counterpart and derive the correspondingly analytical expressions for the quantum Fisher information (QFI). We find that the contributions of the rotating-wave and counterrotating-wave interaction terms are symmetric at the limit of the infinite ratio of qubit frequency to field frequency, with the QFI reaching a maxim…
We study quantum phase transitions in Heisenberg antiferromagnetic chains with a staggered power-law decaying long-range interactions. Employing the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm and the fidelity susceptibility as the criticality measure, we establish more accurate values of quantum critical points than the results obtained from the spin-wave approximation, quantum Monte Carlo and DMRG in literatures. The deviation is especially evident for strong long-range interactions. We extend isotropic long-range interactions to the anisotropic cases and find that kaleidoscope of …
We study the out of equilibrium steady state properties of the Bose-Fermi-Kondo model, describing a local magnetic moment coupled to two ferromagnetic leads that support bosonic (magnons) and fermionic (Stoner continuum electrons) low energy excitations. This model describes the destruction of the Kondo effect as the coupling to the bosons is increased. Its phase diagram comprises three non-trivial fixed points. Using a dynamical large-$N$approach on the Keldysh contour, we study two different non-equilibrium setups: (a) a finite bias voltage and (b) a finite temperature gradient, imposed acro…
The quantum entanglement measure is determined, for the first time, for a collection of spin-1/2 arranged in a infinite chain with finite temperature and applied to a single-crystal β-\mathrm{T_eVO_4}. The physical quantity proposed here to measure the entanglement is the distance between states by adopting the Hilbert-Schmidt norm. We relate the distance between states with the magnetic susceptibility. The decoherence temperature, above which the entanglement is suppressed, is determined for a system. A correlation among their decoherence temperatures and their respective exchange coupling co…
Quantum criticality usually occurs in many-body systems. Recently it was shown that the quantum Rabi model, which describes a two-level atom coupled to a single model cavity field, presents quantum phase transitions from a normal phase to a superradiate phase when the ratio between the frequency of the two level atom and the frequency of the cavity field extends to infinity. In this work, we study quantum phase transitions in the quantum Rabi model from the fidelity susceptibility perspective. We found that the fidelity susceptibility and the generalized adiabatic susceptibility present univer…
Critical points and phase transitions are characterized by diverging susceptibilities, reflecting the tendency of the system toward spontaneous symmetry breaking. Equilibrium statistical mechanics bounds these instabilities to occur at zero frequency, giving rise to static order parameters. In this work we introduce a new class of dynamical transitions in a quantum many body system far from thermal equilibrium, characterized by a susceptibility diverging at a finite non-zero frequency, an emerging scale set by interactions and non-equilibrium effects. In the broken-symmetry phase the correspon…
We have investigated scaling properties near the quantum critical point between the extended phase and the critical phase in the Aubry-André-Harper model with p-wave pairing, which have rarely been exploited as most investigations focus on the localization transition from the critical phase to the localized phase. We find that the spectrum averaged entanglement entropy and the generalized fidelity susceptibility act as eminent universal order parameters of the corresponding critical point without gap closing. We introduce a Widom scaling ansatz for these criticality probes to develop a unified…
In this paper, we analyze the quantum criticality of the Rabi-Stark model at finite ratios of the qubit and cavity frequencies in terms of the energy gap, the order parameter, as well as the fidelity, if the Stark coupling strength is the same as the cavity frequency. The critical exponents are derived analytically. The energy gap and the length critical exponents are different from those in the quantum Rabi model and the Dicke model. The finite size scaling analysis for the order parameter and the fidelity susceptibility is also performed. The universal scaling behaviors are demonstrated and …
Quantum information-based approaches, in particular the fidelity, have been flexible probes for phase boundaries of quantum matter. A major hurdle to a more widespread application of fidelity and other quantum information measures to strongly correlated quantum materials is the inaccessibility of the fidelity susceptibility to most state-of-the-art numerical methods. This is particularly apparent away from equilibrium where, at present, no general critical theory is available and many standard techniques fail. Motivated by the usefulness of quantum information based measures we show that a wid…
Survival of Hermitian Criticality in the Non-Hermitian Framework
Institute of Biophysics, Dezhou University（德州大学生物物理研究所）；Key Laboratory of Atomic and Subatomic Structure and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education), Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Structure and Fundamental Interactions of Matter, School of Physics, South China Normal University（华南师范大学物理学院原子与亚原子结构及量子控制教育部重点实验室、广东省基础与应用基础研究基金委物质结构与基本相互作用卓越研究中心）；Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Quantum Engineering and Quantum Materials, Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Quantum Matter, Frontier Research Institute for Physics, South China Normal University（华南师范大学前沿物理研究院广东省量子工程与量子材料重点实验室、广东省量子物质粤港联合实验室）；Department of Physics, Shandong University（山东大学物理学院）
We discuss the quantum dynamics of an isolated composite system consisting of weakly interacting many-body subsystems. We focus on one of the subsystems, S, and study the dependence of its quantum correlations and decoherence rate on the state of the weakly-coupled complementary part E, which represents the environment. As a theoretical laboratory, we consider a composite system made of two stacked quantum Ising chains, locally and homogeneously weakly coupled. One of the chains is identified with the subsystem S under scrutiny, and the other one with the environment E. We investigate the beha…
It is well established that quantum criticality is one of the most intriguing phenomena which signals the presence of new states of matter. Without prior knowledge of the local order parameter, the quantum information metric (or fidelity susceptibility) can indicate the presence of a phase transition as well as it measures distance between quantum states. In this work, we calculate the distance between quantum states which is equal to the fidelity susceptibility in quantum model for a time-dependent system describing a two-level atom coupled to a time-driven external field. As inspired by the …
