It has been claimed that decoherence of open quantum systems explains the tendency of macroscopic systems to exhibit quasiclassical behavior. We show that quasiclassicality is in fact an unremarkable property, characterizing generic subsystems of environments even in the absence of dynamical decoherence. It is suggested that decoherence is best regarded as explaining the persistence of true classicality, rather than the emergence, rather than the emergence of quasiclassicality.
The prototypical Schrödinger cat state, i.e., an initial state corresponding to two widely separated Gaussian wave packets, is considered. The decoherence time is calculated solely within the framework of elementary quantum mechanics and equilibrium statistical mechanics. This is at variance with common lore that irreversible coupling to a dissipative environment is the mechanism of decoherence. Here, we show that, on the contrary, decoherence can in fact occur at high temperature even for vanishingly small dissipation.
The decoherence of two initially entangled qubits in a non-Markovian reservoir has been investigated exactly without Born Markovian approximation and rotating-wave approximation(RWA). The non-perturbative quantum master equation is derived and its exact solution is obtained. The decoherence behaviors of two qubits, initially entangled in Bell states, has been investigated in three different cases of parameters. The results show that the counter-rotating wave terms have great influence on the decoherence behavior, and there are differences between the exact solution of the Hamiltonian with RWA …
The aim of this paper is to argue that the "preferred basis problem" is not a real problem in measurement. We will show that, given an apparatus, among the infinite corrrelations that can be established in the final state by means of a change of basis, one and only one makes physical sense. It is the apparatus, through its interaction Hamiltonian, what selects a single basis and determines the observable to be measured, even without decoherence.
Decoherence is well understood, in contrast to disentanglement. According to common lore, irreversible coupling to a dissipative environment is the mechanism for loss of entanglement. Here, we show that, on the contrary, disentanglement can in fact occur at large enough temperatures $T$ even for vanishingly small dissipation (as we have shown previously for decoherence). However, whereas the effect of $T$ on decoherence increases exponentially with time, the effect of $T$ on disentanglement is constant for all times, reflecting a fundamental difference between the two phenomena. Also, the poss…
The decoherence of two qubits, coupled with one-mode cavity separately, has been investigated exactly. The results show that, for the resonant case, the decoherence behavior of system is similar to Markovian case when the coupling strength is weak, while the concurrence vanishes in finite time and might recover fractional initial entanglement before it permanently vanishes when the coupling strength is strong. And for detuning case, the entanglement could periodically recover after a period of time from its disappearance. These results are quite different from that of system subjected to Jayne…
We study the quantum kicked rotor in resonance subjected to an unitary noise defined through Kraus operators, we show that this type of decoherence does not, in general, lead to the classical diffusive behavior. We find exact analytical expressions for the density matrix and the variance in the primary resonances. The variance does not loose its ballistic behavior, however the coherence decays as a power law. The secondary resonances are treated numerically, obtaining a power-law decay for the variance and an exponential law decay for the coherence.
The mechanism of the transition of a dynamical system from quantum to classical mechanics is one of the remaining challenges of quantum theory. Currently, it is considered to occur via decoherence caused by entanglement and/or stochastic interaction with a quantum environment. Here we prove that, in the absence of de-phasing environmental interaction, the asymptotic spatial wave function of any quantum system, propagating over distances and times large on an atomic scale but still microscopic, and subject to arbitrary deterministic fields, becomes proportional to the initial momentum wave func…
In a recent article, Ford, Lewis and O'Connell (PRA 64, 032101 (2001)) discuss a thought experiment in which a Brownian particle is subjected to a double-slit measurement. Analyzing the decay of the emerging interference pattern, they derive a decoherence rate that is much faster than previous results and even persists in the limit of vanishing dissipation. This result is based on the definition of a certain attenuation factor, which they analyze for short times. In this note, we point out that this attenuation factor captures the physics of decoherence only for times larger than a certain tim…
Characterizing a quantum process is the critical first step towards applying such a process in a quantum information protocol. Full process characterization is known to be extremely resource-intensive, motivating the search for more efficient ways to extract salient information about the process. An example is the identification of "decoherence-free subspaces", in which computation or communications may be carried out, immune to the principal sources of decoherence in the system. Here we propose and demonstrate a protocol which enables one to directly identify a DFS without carrying out a full…
With a choice of boundary conditions for solutions of the Schrödinger equation, state vectors and density operators even for closed systems evolve asymmetrically in time. For open systems, standard quantum mechanics consequently predicts irreversibility and signatures of the extrinsic arrow of time. The result is a new framework for the treatment of decoherence, not based on a reduced dynamics or a master equation. As an application, using a general model we quantitatively match previously puzzling experimental results and can conclude that they are the measurable consequence of the indistingu…
Since there are many examples in which no decoherence-free subsystems exist (among them all cases where the error generators act irreducibly on the system Hilbert space), it is of interest to search for novel mechanisms which suppress decoherence in these more general cases. Drawing on recent work (quant-ph/0502153) we present three results which indicate decoherence suppression without the need for noiseless subsystems. There is a certain trade-off; our results do not necessarily apply to an arbitrary initial density matrix, or for completely generic noise parameters. On the other hand, our c…
We present a scheme to implement a universal set of quantum gates based on achievable interactions, and the gates can be protected against decoherences through dynamical-decoupling approach without encoding. By properly designing system evolutions, the desired system interactions commute with the elements forming dynamical decoupling pulses. Thus, the effect of decoherences can be eliminated by repeatedly applying the pulses, without noticeably affecting the system evolutions governed by the desired system interactions given small enough time interval between pulses. Moreover, due to the commu…
That decoherence can take place in the presence of energy conservation seems to be a poorly known fact. That lack of knowledge has for example bedevilled the discussion of the "black hole information" problem. I present a simple model which illustrates such energy free decoherence.
We study the spontaneous decoherence of the coupled harmonic oscillators confined in a ring container, where the nearest-neighbor harmonic potentials are taken into consideration. Without any external symmetry breaking field or surrounding environment, the quantum superposition state prepared in the relative degrees of freedom gradually loses its quantum coherence spontaneously. This spontaneous decoherence is interpreted by the hidden couplings between the center-of-mass and relative degrees of freedoms, which actually originates from the symmetries of the ring geometry and corresponding nont…
We study two quantum versions of the Eddington clock-synchronization protocol in the presence of decoherence. The first protocol uses maximally entangled states to achieve the Heisenberg limit for clock synchronization. The second protocol achieves the limit without using entanglement. We show the equivalence of the two protocols under any single-qubit decoherence model that does not itself provide synchronization information.
This study was started to know mysterious classicality of nuclei. Using three particles model without external environments, it is found that decisions of respective state of three particles by decoherence are not simultaneous. Furthermore, in this model, wave function of total three body system collapses spontaneously without any external environments. Therefore we may able to insist that a wavefunction of our universe has already collapsed spontaneously without any external observer, because of the same mechanism with this model.
Distribution functions defined in accord with the quantum theory of measurement are combined with results obtained from the quantum Langevin equation to discuss decoherence in quantum Brownian motion. Closed form expressions for wave packet spreading and the attenuation of coherence of a pair of wave packets are obtained. The results are exact within the context of linear passive dissipation. It is shown that, contrary to widely accepted current belief, decoherence can occur at high temperature in the absence of dissipation. Expressions for the decoherence time with and without dissipation are…
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…
Recently some authors have pointed out that there exist nonclassical correlations which are more general, and possibly more fundamental, than entanglement. For these general quantum correlations and their classical counterparts, under the action of decoherence, we identify three general types of dynamics that include a peculiar sudden change in their decay rates. We show that, under suitable conditions, the classical correlation is unaffected by decoherence. Such dynamic behavior suggests an operational measure of both classical and quantum correlations that can be computed without any extremi…
We report an anomalous decoherence phenomenon of a quantum dissipative system in the framework of a stochastic decoupling scheme along with a hierarchical equations-of-motion formalism without the usual Born-Markov or weak coupling approximations. It is found that the decoherence of a two-qubit spin-boson model can be reduced by increasing the bath temperature in strong-coupling regimes. For the weak-coupling situation, we find that the bath temperature may enhance the decoherence. This result is contrary to the common recognition that a higher bath temperature always induces a more severe dec…
By making the second quantization for the Cini Model of quantum measurement without wave function collapse [M. Cini, Nuovo Cimento, B73 27(1983)], the second order quantum decoherence (SOQD) is studied with a two mode boson system interacting with an idealized apparatus composed by two quantum oscillators. In the classical limit that the apparatus is prepared in a Fock state with a very large quantum number, or in a coherent state with average quantum numbers large enough, the SOQD phenomenon appears similar to the first order case of quantum decoherence.
We investigate the decoherence effect of a bosonic bath on the Berry phase of a spin-1/2 in a time-dependent magnetic field, without making the Markovian approximation. A two-cycle process resulting in a pure Berry phase is considered. The low-frequency quantum noise significantly affects the Berry phase. In the adiabatic limit, the high-frequency quantum noise only has a small effect. The result is also valid in some more general situations.
We consider interactions that generate a universal set of quantum gates on logical qubits encoded in a collective-dephasing-free subspace, and discuss their implementations with trapped ions. This allows for the removal of the by-far largest source of decoherence in current trapped-ion experiments, collective dephasing. In addition, an explicit parametrization of all two-body Hamiltonians able to generate such gates without the system's state ever exiting the protected subspace is provided.
We study a generic open quantum system where the coupling between the system and its environment is of an energy-preserving quantum nondemolition (QND) type. We obtain the general master equation for the evolution of such a system under the influence of a squeezed thermal bath of harmonic oscillators. From the master equation it can be seen explicitly that the process involves decoherence or dephasing without any dissipation of energy. We work out the decoherence-causing term in the high and zero temperature limits and check that they match with known results for the case of a thermal bath. Th…
It is commonly stated that decoherence in open quantum systems is due to growing entanglement with an environment. In practice, however, surprisingly often decoherence may equally well be described by random unitary dynamics without invoking a quantum environment at all. For a single qubit, for instance, pure decoherence (or phase damping) is always of random unitary type. Here, we construct a simple example of true quantum decoherence of two qubits: we present a feasible phase damping channel of which we show that it cannot be understood in terms of random unitary dynamics. We give a very int…
This paper explores the use of laboratory closed-loop learning control to either fight or cooperate with decoherence in the optimal manipulation of quantum dynamics. Simulations of the processes are performed in a Lindblad formulation on multilevel quantum systems strongly interacting with the environment without spontaneous emission. When seeking a high control yield it is possible to find fields that successfully fight with decoherence while attaining a good quality yield. When seeking modest control yields, fields can be found which are optimally shaped to cooperate with decoherence and the…
Quantum spin networks form a generic system to describe a range of quantum devices for quantum information processing and sensing applications. Understanding how to control them is essential to achieve devices with practical functionalities. Energy landscape shaping is a novel control paradigm to achieve selective transfer of excitations in a spin network with surprisingly strong robustness towards uncertainties in the Hamiltonians. Here we study the effect of decoherence, specifically generic pure dephasing, on the robustness of these controllers. Results indicate that while the effectiveness…
Loss and decoherence are a major problem in the transmission of non-classical states of light over large distances. It was recently shown that the effects of decoherence can be reduced by applying a probabilistic noiseless attenuator before transmitting a quantum state through a lossy channel, followed by probabilistic noiseless amplification (M. Micuda et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 180503 (2012)). Here we show that similar results can be obtained for certain kinds of macroscopic quantum states by squeezing the signal before transmission, followed by deterministic amplification and anti-squeezi…
Decoherence-Free Subsystems (DFS) are a powerful means of protecting quantum information against noise with known symmetry properties. Although Hamiltonians theoretically exist that can implement a universal set of logic gates on DFS encoded qubits without ever leaving the protected subsystem, the natural Hamiltonians that are available in specific implementations do not necessarily have this property. Here we describe some of the principles that can be used in such cases to operate on encoded qubits without losing the protection offered by the DFS. In particular, we show how dynamical decoupl…
Coherence in an open quantum system is degraded through its interaction with a bath. This decoherence can be avoided by restricting the dynamics of the system to special decoherence-free subspaces. These subspaces are usually constructed under the assumption of spatially symmetric system-bath coupling. Here we show that decoherence-free subspaces may appear without spatial symmetry. Instead, we consider a model of system-bath interactions in which to first order only multiple-qubit coupling to the bath is present, with single-qubit system-bath coupling absent. We derive necessary and sufficien…
We study a class of quantum measurement models. A microscopic object is entangled with a macroscopic pointer such that a distinct pointer position is tied to each eigenvalue of the measured object observable. Those different pointer positions mutually decohere under the influence of an environment. Overcoming limitations of previous approaches we (i) cope with initial correlations between pointer and environment by considering them initially in a metastable local thermal equilibrium, (ii) allow for object-pointer entanglement and environment-induced decoherence of distinct pointer readouts to …
We propose a quantum-information processor that consists of decoherence-free logical qubits encoded into arrays of dipole-coupled qubits. High-fidelity single-qubit operations are performed deterministically within a decoherence-free subsystem without leakage via global addressing of bichromatic laser fields. Two-qubit operations are realized locally with four physical qubits, and between separated logical qubits using linear optics. We show how to prepare cluster states using this method. We include all non-nearest-neighbor effects in our calculations, and we assume the qubits are not located…
This paper is motivated by the suggestion [W. Zurek, Physica Scripta, T76, 186 (1998)] that the chaotic tumbling of the satellite Hyperion would become non-classical within 20 years, but for the effects of environmental decoherence. The dynamics of quantum and classical probability distributions are compared for a satellite rotating perpendicular to its orbital plane, driven by the gravitational gradient. The model is studied with and without environmental decoherence. Without decoherence, the maximum quantum-classical (QC) differences in its average angular momentum scale as hbar^{2/3} for ch…
Everett's relative states interpretation of quantum mechanics has met with problems related to probability, the preferred basis, and multiplicity. The third theme, I argue, is the most important one. It has led to developments of the original approach into many-worlds, many-minds, and decoherence-based approaches. The latter especially have been advocated in recent years, in an effort to understand multiplicity without resorting to what is often perceived as extravagant constructions. Drawing from and adding to arguments of others, I show that proponents of decoherence-based approaches have no…
A hybrid quantum computing scheme is studied where the hybrid qubit is made of an ion trap qubit serving as the information storage and a solid-state charge qubit serving as the quantum processor, connected by a superconducting cavity. In this paper, we extend our previous work [1] and study the decoherence, coupling and scalability of the hybrid system. We present our calculations of the decoherence of the coupled ion - charge system due to the charge fluctuations in the solid-state system and the dissipation of the superconducting cavity under laser radiation. A gate scheme that exploits rap…
We study, in the paradigm of open quantum systems, the dynamics of quantum coherence of a static polarizable two-level atom which is coupled with a thermal bath of fluctuating electromagnetic field in the absence and presence of boundaries. The purpose is to find the conditions under which the decoherence can be inhibited effectively. We find that without boundaries, quantum coherence of the two-level atom inevitably decreases due to the effect of thermal bath. However, the quantum decoherence, in the presence of a boundary, could be effectively inhibited when the atom is transversely polariza…
The conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics, though it permits a correspondence to classical physics, leaves the exact mechanism of transition unclear. Though this was only of philosophical importance throughout the twentieth century, over the past decade new technological developments, such as quantum computing, require a more thorough understanding of not just the result of quantum emergence, but also its mechanism. Quantum decoherence theory is the model that developed out of necessity to deal with the quantum-classical transition explicitly, and without external observers. In this…
The experiment of Etano et al which demonstrated the quantum Zeno effect (QZE) in an optical experiment was explained by Frerichs and Schenzle without invoking the wave function collapse. In this report it is proposed that the collapse does occur, and it can be explained by the `environment induced decoherence' theory. The environment here consists of the completely quantized field vacuum modes. The spontaneous emission life time of the atom sets a fundamental limit on the requirement of `continuous measurements' for QZE. This limit turns out to be related to the time-energy uncertainty relati…
The development of quantum walks in the context of quantum computation, as generalisations of random walk techniques, led rapidly to several new quantum algorithms. These all follow unitary quantum evolution, apart from the final measurement. Since logical qubits in a quantum computer must be protected from decoherence by error correction, there is no need to consider decoherence at the level of algorithms. Nonetheless, enlarging the range of quantum dynamics to include non-unitary evolution provides a wider range of possibilities for tuning the properties of quantum walks. For example, small …
Quantum-enhanced measurements use highly non-classical quantum states in order to enhance the precision of the measurement of classical quantities, like the length of an optical cavity. The major goal is to beat the standard quantum limit (SQL), i.e. a precision of order $1/\sqrt{N}$, where $N$ is the number of quantum resources (e.g. the number of photons or atoms used), and to achieve a scaling $1/N$, known as the Heisenberg limit. Doing so would have tremendous impact in many areas, but so far only three experiments have demonstrated a slight improvement over the SQL. The required quantum s…
In this paper, decoherence is studied for quantum systems undergoing adiabatic processes, which are coupled to huge quantum environments. It is shown that decoherence can happen with respect to a preferred basis given by transient self-Hamiltonian.This result can be used to justify a most-often-used definition of quantum work for a system undergoing an adiabatic process, without resorting to measurement.
Decoherence is a fundamental obstacle to the implementation of large-scale and low-noise quantum information processing devices. In this work, we suggest an approach for suppressing errors by employing pre-processing and post-processing unitary operations, which precede and follow the action of a decoherence channel. In contrast to quantum error correction and measurement-based methods, the suggested approach relies on specifically designed unitary operators for a particular state without the need in ancillary qubits or post-selection procedures. We consider the case of decoherence channels ac…
We investigate the time evolution of the chirality reduced density matrix for a discrete-time quantum walk on a one-dimensional lattice, which is obtained by tracing out the spatial degree of freedom. We analyze the standard case, without decoherence, and the situation where decoherence appears in the form of broken links in the lattice. By examining the trace distance for possible pairs of initial states as a function of time, we conclude that the evolution of the reduced density matrix is non-Markovian, in the sense defined in [H. P. Breuer, E. M. Laine, and J. Piilo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 2…
As illustrated by Schrodingers cat, there are often several macroscopically different versions of reality simultaneously existing in the wave function. On the face of it, this would seem to imply that an observer could perceive a superposition of versions and thereby put quantum mechanics at odds with our perceptions. However one can show, without invoking decoherence or the environment, that the linearity of quantum mechanics implies we will perceive only a single, classical version of reality. Linearity also implies our perceptions will have a particle-like consistency.
We propose a scheme for long-distance distribution of quantum entanglement in which the entanglement between qubits at intermediate stations of the channel is established by using bright light pulses in squeezed states coupled to the qubits in cavities with a weak dispersive interaction. The fidelity of the entanglement between qubits at the neighbor stations (10 km apart from each other) obtained by postselection through the balanced homodyne detection of 7 dB squeezed pulses can reach F=0.99 without using entanglement purification, at same time, the probability of successful generation of en…
It is well known that the interaction of quantum systems with the environment reduces the inherent quantum correlations. Under special circumstances the effect of decoherence can be reversed, for example, the interaction modeled by an amplitude damping channel can boost the teleportation fidelity from the classical to the quantum region for a bipartite quantum state. Here, we first show that this phenomena fails in the case of a quantum key distribution protocol. We further show that the technique of weak measurement can be used to slow down the process of decoherence, thereby helping to prese…
In the theory of antiferromagnetism, the staggered field---an external magnetic field that alternates in sign on atomic length scales---is used to select the classical Néel state from a quantum magnet, but justification is missing. This work examines, within the decoherence framework, whether repeated $local$ measurement can replace a staggered field. Accordingly, the conditions under which local decoherence can be considered a continuous measurement are studied. The dynamics of a small magnetic system is analysed to illustrate that local decoherence can lead to (symmetry-broken) order similar…
The time development of the reduced density matrix for a quantum oscillator damped by coupling it to an ohmic environment is calculated via an identity of the Debye-Waller form. Results obtained some years ago by Hakim and the author in the free particle limit [1] are thus recovered. The evolution of a free particle in a prepared initial state is examined, and a previously published exchange [2,3] is illuminated with figures showing no decoherence without dissipation. [1] V. Hakim and V. Ambegaokar, Phys. Rev. A 32, 423 (1985). [2] G.W. Ford and R.F. O'Connell, Phys. Rev. A 70, 026102 (2004). …
We investigate the error due to D.C. Stark effect for quantum information processing for trapped ion quantum computers using the scalable architecture proposed in J. Res. Natl. Inst. Stan. 103, 259 (1998) and Nature 417, 709 (2002). As the operation speed increases, dephasing and decoherence due to the D.C. Stark effect becomes prominent as a large electric field is applied for transporting ions rapidly. We estimate the relative significance of the decoherence and dephasing effects and find that the latter is dominant. We find that the minimum possible of dephasing is quadratic in the time of …
We show that classical-quantum correspondence of center of mass motion in two coupled delta-kicked rotors can be obtained from intrinsic decoherence of the system itself which occurs due to the entanglement of the center of mass motion to the internal degree of freedom without coupling to external environment.
A quantum cluster expansion method is developed for the problem of localized electron spin decoherence due to dipolar fluctuations of lattice nuclear spins. At the lowest order it provides a microscopic explanation for the Lorentzian diffusion of Hahn echoes without resorting to any phenomenological Markovian assumption. Our numerical results show remarkable agreement with recent electron spin echo experiments in phosphorus doped silicon.
Projective measurements are an essential element of quantum mechanics. In most cases, they cause an irreversible change of the quantum system on which they act. However, measurements can also be used to stabilize quantum states from decay processes, which is known as the quantum Zeno effect (QZE). Here, we demonstrate this effect for the case of a superposition state of a nuclear spin qubit, using an ancilla to perform the measurement. As a result, the quantum state of the qubit is protected against dephasing without relying on an ensemble nature of NMR experiments. We also propose a scheme to…
