We discuss in detail how non-Markovian open system dynamics can be described in terms of quantum jumps [J. Piilo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 180402 (2008)]. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to have a jump description contained in the physical Hilbert space of the reduced system. The developed non-Markovian quantum jump (NMQJ) approach is a generalization of the Markovian Monte Carlo Wave Function (MCWF) method into the non-Markovian regime. The method conserves both the probabilities in the density matrix and the norms of the state vectors exactly, and sheds new light on non-Markovian dynamics. The dynamics of the pure state ensemble illustrates how local-in-time master equation can describe memory effects and how the current state of the system carries information on its earlier state. Our approach solves the problem of negative jump probabilities of the Markovian MCWF method in the non-Markovian regime by defining the corresponding jump process with positive probability. The results demonstrate that in the theoretical description of non-Markovian open systems, there occurs quantum jumps which recreate seemingly lost superpositions due to the memory.
The dynamics of a non-Markovian open quantum system described by a general time-local master equation is studied. The propagation of the density operator is constructed in terms of two processes: (i) deterministic evolution and (ii) evolution of a probability density functional in the projective Hilbert space. The analysis provides a derivation for the jump probabilities used in the recently developed non-Markovian quantum jump (NMQJ) method (Piilo et al 2008 Phys. Rev. Lett. 100 180402).
Open quantum systems that interact with structured reservoirs exhibit non-Markovian dynamics. We present a quantum jump method for treating the dynamics of such systems. This approach is a generalization of the standard Monte Carlo Wave Function (MCWF) method for Markovian dynamics. The MCWF method identifies decay rates with jump probabilities and fails for non-Markovian systems where the time-dependent rates become temporarily negative. Our non-Markovian quantum jump (NMQJ) approach circumvents this problem and provides an efficient unravelling of the ensemble dynamics.
We solve two long standing problems for stochastic descriptions of open quantum system dynamics. First, we find the classical stochastic processes corresponding to non-Markovian quantum state diffusion and non-Markovian quantum jumps in projective Hilbert space. Second, we show that the diffusive limit of non-Markovian quantum jumps can be taken on the projective Hilbert space in such a way that it coincides with non-Markovian quantum state diffusion. However, the very same limit taken on the Hilbert space leads to a completely new diffusive unraveling, which we call non-Markovian quantum diff…
The quantum jump approach allows to characterize the stochastic dynamics associated to an open quantum system submitted to a continuous measurement action. In this paper we show that this formalism can consistently be extended to non-Markovian system dynamics. The results rely in studying a measurement process performed on a bipartite arrangement characterized by a Markovian Lindblad evolution. Both a renewal and non-renewal extensions are found. The general structure of non-local master equations that admit an unravelling in terms of the corresponding non-Markovian trajectories are also found…
The Monte Carlo wave function method or the quantum trajectory/jump approach is a powerful tool to study dissipative dynamics governed by the Markovian master equation, in particular for high-dimensional systems and when it is difficult to simulate directly. In this paper, we extend this method to the non-Markovian case described by the generalized Lindblad master equation. Two examples to illustrate the method are presented and discussed. The results show that the method can correctly reproduce the dissipative dynamics for the system. The difference between this method and the traditional Mar…
The development and use of Monte Carlo algorithms plays a visible role in the study of non-Markovian quantum dynamics due to the provided insight and powerful numerical methods for solving the system dynamics. In the Markovian case, the connections between the various types of methods are fairly well-understood while for non-Markovian case there has so far been only a few studies. We focus here on two jumplike unravelings of non-Markovian dynamics, the non-Markovian quantum jump (NMQJ) method and the property state method by Gambetta, Askerud, and Wiseman (GAW). The results for simple quantum …
Non-Markovian evolution of an open quantum system can be `unraveled' into pure state trajectories generated by a non-Markovian stochastic (diffusive) Schrödinger equation, as introduced by Diósi, Gisin, and Strunz. Recently we have shown that such equations can be derived using the modal (hidden variable) interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this paper we generalize this theory to treat jump-like unravelings. To illustrate the jump-like behavior we consider a simple system: A classically driven (at Rabi frequency $Ω$) two-level atom coupled linearly to a three mode optical bath, with a cent…
It is shown that non-Markovian master equations for an open system which are local in time can be unravelled through a piecewise deterministic quantum jump process in its Hilbert space. We derive a stochastic Schrödinger equation that reveals how non-Markovian effects are manifested in statistical correlations between different realizations of the process. Moreover, we demonstrate that possible violations of the positivity of approximate master equations are closely connected to singularities of the stochastic Schrödinger equation, which could lead to important insights into the structural cha…
We utilize the novel non-Markovian quantum jump (NMQJ) approach to stochastically simulate exciton dynamics derived from a time-convolutionless master equation. For relevant parameters and time scales, the time-dependent, oscillatory decoherence rates can have negative regions, a signature of non-Markovian behavior and of the revival of coherences. This can lead to non-Markovian population beatings for a dimer system at room temperature. We show that strong exciton-phonon coupling to low frequency modes can considerably modify transport properties. We observe increased exciton transport, which…
We derive a time-convolutionless master equation for the spin-boson model in the weak coupling limit. The temporarily negative decay rates in the master equation indicate short time memory effects in the dynamics which is explicitly revealed when the dynamics is studied using the non-Markovian jump description. The approach gives new insight into the memory effects influencing the spin dynamics and demonstrates, how for the spin-boson model the the co-operative action of different channels complicates the detection of memory effects in the dynamics.
We introduce jumptime unraveling as a distinct description of open quantum systems. As our starting point, we consider quantum jump trajectories, which emerge, physically, from continuous quantum measurements, or, formally, from the unraveling of Markovian quantum master equations. If the stochastically evolving quantum trajectories are ensemble-averaged at specific times, the resulting quantum states are solutions to the associated quantum master equation. We demonstrate that quantum trajectories can also be ensemble-averaged at specific jump counts. The resulting jumptime-averaged quantum st…
Non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (NMQSD) is an exact method for calculating the reduced density matrix of an arbitrary subsystem interacting linearly with the radiation field. Applications of the theory have however been few due to the intractable nature of the variational-differential NMQSD evolution equation. Recently, we argued that the variational-differential equation can be rewritten as an integrodifferential equation which can be readily solved numerically. This manuscript provides an explicit derivation of the modified equations. Applications to intermittent fluorescence in $^{24}…
We investigate the geometric phase of a two-level atom (qubit) coupled to a bosonic reservoir with Lorentzian spectral density, and find that for the non-Markovian dynamics in which rotating-wave approximation (RWA) is performed, geometric phase has a $π$-phase jump at the nodal point. However, the exact result without RWA given by hierarchy equation of motion method shows that there is no such a phase jump or nodal structure in geometric phase. Thus our results demonstrate that the counter-rotating terms significantly contribute to the geometric phase in multi-mode Hamiltonian under certain c…
Recently, a large class of quantum non-Markovian piecewise dynamics for an open quantum system obeying closed evolution equations has been introduced [B. Vacchini, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 230401 (2016)]. These dynamics have been defined in terms of a waiting-time distribution between quantum jumps, along with quantum maps describing the effect of jumps and the system's evolution between them. Here, we present a quantum collision model with memory, whose reduced dynamics in the continuous-time limit reproduces the above class of non-Markovian piecewise dynamics, thus providing an explicit microsc…
A general method is developed which enables the exact treatment of the non-Markovian quantum dynamics of open systems through a Monte Carlo simulation technique. The method is based on a stochastic formulation of the von Neumann equation of the composite system and employs a pair of product states following a Markovian random jump process. The performance of the method is illustrated by means of stochastic simulations of the dynamics of open systems interacting with a Bosonic reservoir at zero temperature and with a spin bath in the strong coupling regime.
The "correlated-projection technique" has been successfully applied to derive a large class of highly non Markovian dynamics, the so called non Markovian generalized Lindblad type equations or Lindblad rate equations. In this article, general unravellings are presented for these equations, described in terms of jump-diffusion stochastic differential equations for wave functions. We show also that the proposed unravelling can be interpreted in terms of measurements continuous in time, but with some conceptual restrictions. The main point in the measurement interpretation is that the structure i…
We consider quantum stochastic processes and discuss a level 2.5 large deviation formalism providing an explicit and complete characterisation of fluctuations of time-averaged quantities, in the large-time limit. We analyse two classes of quantum stochastic dynamics, within this framework. The first class consists of the quantum jump trajectories related to photon detection; the second is quantum state diffusion related to homodyne detection. For both processes, we present the level 2.5 functional starting from the corresponding quantum stochastic Schrödinger equation and we discuss connection…
Stochastic methods with quantum jumps are often used to solve open quantum system dynamics. Moreover, they provide insight into fundamental topics, as the role of measurements in quantum mechanics and the description of non-Markovian memory effects. However, there is no unified framework to use quantum jumps to describe open system dynamics in any regime. We solve this issue by developing the Rate Operator Quantum Jump (ROQJ) approach. The method not only applies to both Markovian and non-Markovian evolutions, but also allows us to unravel master equations for which previous methods do not wor…
Simulation methods based on stochastic realizations of state vector evolutions are commonly used tools to solve open quantum system dynamics, both in the Markovian and non-Markovian regime. Here, we address the question of waiting time distribution (WTD) of quantum jumps for non-Markovian systems. We generalize Markovian quantum trajectory methods in the sense of deriving an exact analytical WTD for non-Markovian quantum dynamics and show explicitly how to construct this distribution for certain commonly used quantum optical systems.
We study non-Markovian dynamics of a two level atom using pseudomode method. Because of the memory effect of non-Markovian dynamics, the atom receives back information and excited energy from the reservoir at a later time, which causes more complicated behaviors than Markovian dynamics. With pseudomode method, non-Markovian dynamics of the atom can be mapped into Markovian dynamics of the atom and pseudomode. We show that by using pseudomode method and quantum jump approach for Markovian dynamics, we get a physically intuitive insight into the memory effect of non-Markovian dynamics. It sugges…
We investigate the non-Markovian dynamics of two-state systems in structured reservoirs. We establish a connection between two theoretical quantum approaches, the pseudomodes [B. M. Garraway, Phys. Rev. A 55, 2290 (1997)] and the recently developed non-Markovian quantum jump method [J. Piilo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 180402 (2008)]. This connection provides a clear physical picture of how the structured reservoir affects the system dynamics, indicating the role of the pseudomodes as an effective description of the environmental memory.
Modeling the non-equilibrium dissipative dynamics of strongly interacting quantized degrees of freedom is a fundamental problem in several branches of physics and chemistry. We implement a quantum state trajectory scheme for solving Lindblad quantum master equations that describe coherent and dissipative processes for a set of strongly-coupled quantized oscillators. The scheme involves a sequence of stochastic quantum jumps with transition probabilities determined the system state and the system-reservoir dynamics. Between consecutive jumps, the wavefunction is propagated in coordinate space u…
A method for deriving accurate analytic approximations for Markovian open quantum systems was recently introduced in [F. Lucas and K. Hornberger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 240401 (2013)]. Here, we present a detailed derivation of the underlying non-perturbative jump expansion, which involves an adaptive resummation to ensure optimal convergence. Applying this to a set of exemplary master equations, we find that the resummation typically leads to convergence within the lowest two to five orders. Besides facilitating analytic approximations, the optimal jump expansion thus provides a numerical schem…
We consider Markovian open quantum systems subject to stochastic resetting, which means that the dissipative time evolution is reset at randomly distributed times to the initial state. We show that the ensuing dynamics is non-Markovian and has the form of a generalized Lindblad equation. Interestingly, the statistics of quantum-jumps can be exactly derived. This is achieved by combining techniques from the thermodynamics of quantum-jump trajectories with the renewal structure of the resetting dynamics. We consider as an application of our analysis a driven two-level and an intermittent three-l…
In this work, we investigate the non-Markovianity, quantum Fisher information (QFI) and quantum coherence of a qubit in a nonequilibrium environment and have obtained the expressions of QFI and quantum coherence as well as their relationship. We have also discussed in detail the influences of the different noise parameters on these quantum sffects. The results show that the suitable parameters of the nonequilibrium environment can retard the QFI and quantum coherence in both Markovian and non-Markovian regions. In addition, the smaller memory effects and the larger the jumping rate, the greate…
The entanglement between a Pauli-like two-level system and a quantum harmonic oscillator enhanced by an interaction between them and a $δ$-pulse sequence is studied, with the decoherence due to their coupling with a Markovian bath. Without the Markovian bath, the entanglement is enhanced to maximum possible values. With the Markovian bath, the entanglement is enhanced up to some time and then dissipated, with the system in thermal equilibrium with the Markovian bath after a very long time. The time for achieving the maximum entanglement shows discontinuous jumps over the parameters of decohere…
It is shown that the exact dynamics of a composite quantum system can be represented through a pair of product states which evolve according to a Markovian random jump process. This representation is used to design a general Monte Carlo wave function method that enables the stochastic treatment of the full non-Markovian behavior of open quantum systems. Numerical simulations are carried out which demonstrate that the method is applicable to open systems strongly coupled to a bosonic reservoir, as well as to the interaction with a spin bath. Full details of the simulation algorithms are given, …
In this paper we demonstrate that two commonly used phenomenological post-Markovian quantum master equations can be derived without using any perturbative approximation. A system coupled to an environment characterized by self-classical configurational fluctuations, the latter obeying a Markovian dynamics, defines the underlying physical model. Both Shabani-Lidar equation [A. Shabani and D. A. Lidar, Phys. Rev. A 71, 020101(R) (2005)] and its associated approximated integro-differential kernel master equation are obtained by tracing out two different bipartite Markovian Lindblad dynamics where…
We present an extended collision model to simulate the dynamics of an open quantum system. In our model, the unit to represent the environment is, instead of a single particle, a block which consists of a number of environment particles. The introduced blocks enable us to study the effects of different strategies of system-environment interactions and states of the blocks on the non-Markovianities. We demonstrate our idea in the Gaussian channels of an all-optical system and derive a necessary and sufficient condition of non-Markovianity for such channels. Moreover, we show the equivalence of …
We study the evolution of the entanglement of noninteracting qubits coupled to reservoirs under monitoring of the reservoirs by means of continuous measurements. We calculate the average of the concurrence of the qubits wavefunction over all quantum trajectories. For two qubits coupled to independent baths subjected to local measurements, this average decays exponentially with a rate depending on the measurement scheme only. This contrasts with the known disappearance of entanglement after a finite time for the density matrix in the absence of measurements. For two qubits coupled to a common b…
A $D$-dimensional Markovian open quantum system will undergo quantum jumps between pure states, if we can monitor the bath to which it is coupled with sufficient precision. In general these jumps, plus the between-jump evolution, create a trajectory which passes through infinitely many different pure states. Here we show that, for any ergodic master equation, one can expect to find an {\em adaptive} monitoring scheme on the bath that can confine the system state to jumping between only $K$ states, for some $K \geq (D-1)^2+1$. For $D=2$ we explicitly construct a 2-state ensemble for any ergodic…
We propose a piecewise deterministic Markovian jump process in Hilbert space such that the covariance matrix of this stochastic process solves the thermodynamic quantum master equation. The proposed stochastic process is particularly simple because the normalization of the vectors in Hilbert space is preserved only on average. As a consequence of the nonlinearity of the thermodynamic master equation, the construction of stochastic trajectories involves the density matrix as a running ensemble average. We identify a principle of detailed balance and a fluctuation-dissipation relation for our Ma…
We analyse dynamical large deviations of quantum trajectories in Markovian open quantum systems in their full generality. We derive a {\em quantum level-2.5 large deviation principle} for these systems, which describes the joint fluctuations of time-averaged quantum jump rates and of the time-averaged quantum state for long times. Like its level-2.5 counterpart for classical continuous-time Markov chains (which it contains as a special case) this description is both {\em explicit and complete}, as the statistics of arbitrary time-extensive dynamical observables can be obtained by contraction f…
Quantum open systems are described in the Markovian limit by master equations in Lindblad form. I argue that common ``quantum jumps'' techniques, which solve the master equation by unraveling its evolution into stochastic trajectories in Hilbert space, correspond closely to a particular set of decoherent histories. This is illustrated by a simple model of a photon counting experiment.
We construct a large class of completely positive and trace preserving non-Markovian dynamical maps for an open quantum system. These maps arise from a piecewise dynamics characterized by a continuous time evolution interrupted by jumps, randomly distributed in time and described by a quantum channel. The state of the open system is shown to obey a closed evolution equation, given by a master equation with a memory kernel and a inhomogeneous term. The non-Markovianity of the obtained dynamics is explicitly assessed studying the behavior of the distinguishability of two different initial system…
The large deviation theory has recently been applied to open quantum systems to uncover dynamical crossovers in the space of quantum trajectories associated to Markovian evolutions. Such dynamical crossovers are characterized by qualitative changes in the fluctuations of rare quantum jump trajectories, and have been observed in the statistics of coherently driven quantum systems. In this article we investigate the counting statistics of rare quantum trajectories of an undriven system undergoing a pure relaxation process, namely, Markovian exciton transport. We find that dynamical crossovers oc…
A dynamical symmetry is employed to determine the structure of the quantum non-Markovian time-local master equation. Such a structure is composed from two components: scalar kinetic coefficients and the standard quantum Markovian operator form. The kinetic coefficients are generally time-dependent and incorporate information on the kinematics and memory effects, while the operators manifest the dynamical symmetry. Specifically, we focus on time-translation symmetric dynamics, where the Lindblad jump operators constitute the eigenoperators of the free dynamics. This symmetry is motivated by the…
We consider Markovian dynamics of a finitely dimensional open quantum system featuring a weak unitary symmetry, i.e., when the action of a unitary symmetry on the space of density matrices commutes with the master operator governing the dynamics. We show how to encode the weak symmetry in quantum stochastic dynamics of the system by constructing a weakly symmetric representation of the master operator: a symmetric Hamiltonian, and jump operators connecting only the symmetry eigenspaces with a fixed eigenvalue ratio. In turn, this representation simplifies both the construction of the master op…
We consider the time-inhomogeneous Markovian jump process introduced by John S. Bell [Phys.Rep. 137, 49] for a lattice quantum field theory, which runs on the associated configuration space. Its jump rates, tailored to give the process the quantum distribution $|Ψ_t|^2$ at all times $t$, typically exhibit singularities. We establish the existence of a unique such process for all times, under suitable assumptions on the Hamiltonian or the initial state vector $Ψ_0$. The proof of non-explosion takes advantage of the special role of the $|Ψ_t|^2$ distribution.
We present a non-Markovian quantum jump approach for simulating coherent energy transfer dynamics in molecular systems in the presence of laser fields. By combining a coherent modified Redfield theory (CMRT) and a non-Markovian quantum jump (NMQJ) method, this new approach inherits the broad-range validity from the CMRT and highly efficient propagation from the NMQJ. To implement NMQJ propagation of CMRT, we show that the CMRT master equation can be casted into a generalized Lindblad form. Moreover, we extend the NMQJ approach to treat time-dependent Hamiltonian, enabling the description of ex…
Controlling dynamical fluctuations in open quantum systems is essential both for our comprehension of quantum nonequilibrium behaviour and for its possible application in near-term quantum technologies. However, understanding these fluctuations is extremely challenging due, to a large extent, to a lack of efficient important sampling methods for quantum systems. Here, we devise a unified framework --based on population-dynamics methods-- for the evaluation of the full probability distribution of generic time-integrated observables in Markovian quantum jump processes. These include quantities c…
The thermodynamic and kinetic uncertainty relations indicate trade-offs between the relative fluctuation of observables and thermodynamic quantities such as dissipation and dynamical activity. Although these relations have been well studied for classical systems, they remain largely unexplored in the quantum regime. In this paper, we investigate such trade-off relations for Markovian open quantum systems whose underlying dynamics are quantum jumps, such as thermal processes and quantum measurement processes. Specifically, we derive finite-time lower bounds on the relative fluctuation of both d…
Simple, controllable models play an important role to learn how to manipulate and control quantum resources. We focus here on quantum non-Markovianity and model the evolution of open quantum systems by quantum renewal processes. This class of quantum dynamics provides us with a phenomenological approach to characterise dynamics with a variety of non-Markovian behaviours, here described in terms of the trace distance between two reduced states. By adopting a trajectory picture for the open quantum system evolution, we analyse how non-Markovianity is influenced by the constituents defining the q…
We study the Lindbladian dynamics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model, where the SYK model is coupled to Markovian reservoirs with jump operators that are either linear or quadratic in the Majorana fermion operators. Here, the linear jump operators are non-random while the quadratic jump operators are sampled from a Gaussian distribution. In the limit of large $N$, where $N$ is the number of Majorana fermion operators, and also in the limit of large $N$ and $M$, where $M$ is the number of jump operators, the SYK Lindbladians are analytically tractable, and we obtain their stationary Green's f…
