Calculating the degree of non-Markovianity of a dissipative process is a difficult task, even for the dynamics of a single qubit, given the complex maximization problem. In this work, focusing on the entanglement-based quantifier of non-Markovianity, we present an analytical solution for such an optimization problem. We then propose a computable non-Markovianity measure based on generalized robustness of entanglement, an entanglement measure that can be readily calculated by a semidefinite programming method. We show that the non-Markovianity, in a given interval of time, can be witnessed by calculating the expectation value of an observable, making it attractive for experimental investigations.
Quantum non-Markovianity is crucially related to the study of dynamical maps, which are usually derived for initially factorized system-bath states. We here demonstrate that linear response theory also provides a way to derive dynamical maps, but for initially correlated (and in general entangled) states. Importantly, these maps are always time-translational invariant and allow for a much simpler quantification of non-Markovianity compared to previous approaches. We apply our theory to the Caldeira-Leggett model, for which our quantifier is valid beyond linear response and can be expressed ana…
We present a general framework for the information backflow (IB) approach of Markovianity that not only includes a large number, if not all, of IB prescriptions proposed so far but also is equivalent to completely positive divisibility for invertible evolutions. Following the common approach of IB, where monotonic decay of some physical property or some information quantifier is seen as the definition of Markovianity, we propose in our framework a general description of what should be called a proper `physicality quantifier' to define Markovianity. We elucidate different properties of our fram…
Recently, as an aid for musical analysis, in computational musicology mathematical and informatics tools have been developed to quantitatively characterize some aspects of musical compositions. To a musical composition can be attributed by ear a certain amount of memory. This results associated to repetitions and similarities of the patterns in musical scores. To higher variations, a lower amount of memory is perceived. However musical memory of a score has never been quantitatively defined. Here we aim to give such a measure following an approach similar to that used in Physics to quantify th…
We investigate the non-Markovianity of continuous variable Gaussian quantum channels through the evolution of an operational metrological quantifier, namely the Gaussian interferometric power, which captures the minimal precision that can be achieved using bipartite Gaussian probes in a black-box phase estimation setup, where the phase shift generator is \emph{a priori} unknown. We observe that the monotonicity of the Gaussian interferometric power under the action of local Gaussian quantum channels on the ancillary arm of the bipartite probes is a natural indicator of Markovian dynamics; cons…
Non-Markovian effects are ubiquitous in physical quantum systems and remain a significant challenge to achieving high-quality control and reliable quantum computation, but due to their inherent complexity, are rarely characterized. Past approaches to quantifying non-Markovianity have concentrated on small, simple systems, and we show that such measures can capture properties that are irrelevant to applications. With this insight, we propose a method for constructing relevant quantifiers of non-Markovian dynamics and illustrate the scheme's computability by characterizing a model quantum dot ar…
We establish a convex resource theory of non-Markovianity under the constraint of small time intervals within the temporal evolution. We construct the free operations, free states and a generalized bona-fide measure of non-Markovianity. The framework satisfies the basic properties of a consistent resource theory. The proposed resource quantifier is lower bounded by the optimization free Rivas-Huelga-Plenio (RHP) measure of nonMarkovianity. We further define the robustness of non-Markovianity and show that it can directly be expressed as a function of the RHP measure of non-Markovianity. This e…
We construct a dynamical map which is not positive divisible and does not present information backflow either (as measured by trace norm quantifiers). It is formulated for a qutrit system undergoing noninvertible dynamics. This provides an evidence that the two definitions of quantum Markovianity based on absence of information backflow and positive divisibility are nonequivalent for general noninvertible dynamical maps
Non-Markovian evolution in open quantum systems is often characterized in terms of the backflow of information from environment to system and is thus an important facet in investigating the performance and robustness of quantum information protocols. In this work, we explore non-Markovianity through the breakdown of monotonicity of a metrological figure of merit, called the quantum interferometric power, which is based on the minimal quantum Fisher information obtained by local unitary evolution of one part of the system, and can be interpreted as a quantifier of quantum correlations beyond en…
Understanding the physical significance and probing the global invariants characterizing quantum topological phases in extended systems is a main challenge in modern physics with major impact in different areas of science. Here, a quantum-information-inspired probing method is proposed where topological phase transitions are revealed by a non-Markovianity quantifier. The idea is illustrated by considering the decoherence dynamics of an external read-out qubit that probes a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) chain with either pure dephasing or dissipative coupling. Qubit decoherence features and non-Ma…
We explore the behavior in time of the energy exchange between a system of interest and its environment, together with its relationship to the non-Markovianity of the system dynamics. In order to evaluate the energy exchange we rely on the full counting statistics formalism, which we use to evaluate the first moment of its probability distribution. We focus in particular on the energy backflow from environment to system, to which we associate a suitable condition and quantifier, which enables us to draw a connection with a recently introduced notion of non-Markovianity based on information bac…
In the last years, the application of machine learning methods has become increasingly relevant in different fields of physics. One of the most significant subjects in the theory of open quantum systems is the study of the characterization of non-Markovian memory effects that emerge dynamically throughout the time evolution of open systems as they interact with their surrounding environment. Here we consider two well-established quantifiers of the degree of memory effects, namely, the trace distance and the entanglement-based measures of non-Markovianity. We demonstrate that using machine lear…
We analyze and compare different measures for the degree of non-Markovianity in the dynamics of open quantum systems. These measures are based on the distinguishability of quantum states which is quantified, on the one hand, by the trace distance or, more generally, by the trace norm of the Helstrom matrix, and, on the other hand, by entropic quantifiers: the Jensen-Shannon divergence, the Holevo or the quantum skew divergence. We explicitly construct a qubit dynamics for which the trace norm based non-Markovianity measure is nonzero, while all the entropic measures turn out to be zero. This l…
We introduce a generalized approach to characterize the non-Markovianity of quantum dynamical maps via breakdown of monotonicity of thermodynamic functions. By adopting an entropy-based formulation of quantum thermodynamics, we use the relationship between heat and entropy to propose a measure of non-Markovianity based on the heat flow for single-qubit quantum evolutions. This measure can be applied for unital dynamical maps that do not invert the sign of the internal energy. Under certain conditions, it can also be extended for other thermodynamic functions, such as internal energy and work f…
A measure of quantum non-Markovianity for an open system dynamics, based on revivals of the distinguishability between system states, has been introduced in the literature using the trace distance as quantifier for distinguishability. Recently it has been suggested to use as measure for the distinguishability of quantum states the trace norm of Helstrom matrices, given by weighted differences of statistical operators. Here we show that this new approach, which generalizes the original one, is consistent with the interpretation of information flow between the system and its environment associat…
We introduce a measure of non-Markovianity based on the minimal amount of extra Markovian noise we have to add to the process via incoherent mixing, in order to make the resulting transformation Markovian too at all times. We show how to evaluate this measure by considering the set of depolarizing evolutions in arbitrary dimension and the set of dephasing evolutions for qubits.
We introduce a necessary and sufficient criterion for the non-Markovianity of Gaussian quantum dynamical maps based on the violation of divisibility. The criterion is derived by defining a general vectorial representation of the covariance matrix which is then exploited to determine the condition for the complete positivity of partial maps associated to arbitrary time intervals. Such construction does not rely on the Choi-Jamiolkowski representation and does not require optimization over states.
We investigate the Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics of Gaussian quantum channels, exploiting a recently introduced necessary and sufficient criterion and the ensuing measure of non-Markovianity based on the violation of the divisibility property of the dynamical map. We compare the paradigmatic instances of Quantum Brownian motion (QBM) and Pure Damping (PD) channels, and for the former we find that the exact dynamical evolution is always non-Markovian in the finite-time as well as in the asymptotic regimes, for any nonvanishing value of the non-Markovianity parameter. If one resorts to th…
We study analytically the non-Markovianity of a spin ensemble, with arbitrary number of spins and spin quantum number, undergoing a pure dephasing dynamics. The system is considered as a part of a larger spin ensemble of any geometry with pairwise interactions. We derive exact formulas for the reduced dynamics of the system and for its non-Markovianity as assessed by the witness of Lorenzo \emph{et al.} [Phys.~Rev.~A \textbf{88}, 020102(R) (2013)]. The non-Markovianity is further investigated in the thermodynamic limit when the environment's size goes to infinity. In this limit and for finite-…
We study quantum non-Markovian dynamics of the Caldeira-Leggett model, a prototypical model for quantum Brownian motion describing a harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a reservoir of harmonic oscillators. Employing the exact analytical solution of this model one can determine the size of memory effects for arbitrary couplings, temperatures and frequency cutoffs. Here, quantum non-Markovianity is defined in terms of the flow of information between the open system and its environment, which is quantified through the Bures metric as distance measure for quantum states. This approach allows u…
In order to engineer an open quantum system and its evolution, it is essential to identify and control the memory effects. These are formally attributed to the non-Markovianity of dynamics that manifests itself by the evolution being indivisible in time, a property which can be witnessed by a non-monotonic behavior of contractive functions or correlation measures. We show that by monitoring directly the entanglement behavior of a system in a tripartite setting it is possible to witness all invertible non-Markovian dynamics, as well as all (also non-invertible) qubit evolutions. This is achieve…
Quantum mechanics, in principle, allows for processes with indefinite causal order. However, most of these causal anomalies have not yet been detected experimentally. We show that every such process can be simulated experimentally by means of non-Markovian dynamics with a measurement on additional degrees of freedom. Explicitly, we provide a constructive scheme to implement arbitrary acausal processes. Furthermore, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for open system dynamics with measurement to yield processes that respect causality locally, and find that tripartite entanglement and no…
Non-Markovian effects can speed up the dynamics of quantum systems while the limits of the evolution time can be derived by quantifiers of quantum statistical speed. We introduce a witness for characterizing the non-Markovianity of quantum evolutions through the Hilbert-Schmidt speed (HSS), which is a special type of quantum statistical speed. This witness has the advantage of not requiring diagonalization of evolved density matrix. Its sensitivity is investigated by considering several paradigmatic instances of open quantum systems, such as one qubit subject to phase-covariant noise and Pauli…
The degree of non-Markovianity of a continuous bath can be quantified by means of the coherence. This simple measure is experimentally accessible through Ramsey spectroscopy, but it is limited to incoherent dynamical maps. We propose an extension of this measure and discuss its application to color centers in diamond, where the optical coherence between two orbital states is affected by interactions with a structured phonon bath. By taking realistic phonon spectral density functions into account, we show that this measure is well-behaved at arbitrary temperatures and that it provides additiona…
We obtain the analytical expression for the Kraus decomposition of the quantum map of an environment modeled by an arbitrary quadratic fermionic Hamiltonian acting on one or two qubits, and derive simple functions to check the non-positivity of the intermediate map. These functions correspond to two different sufficient criteria for non-Markovianity. In the particular case of an environment represented by the Ising Hamiltonian, we discuss the two sources of non-Markovianity in the model, one due to the finite size of the lattice, and another due to the kind of interactions.
We provide a detailed discussion about the unitary and reduced evolution induced by family of Hamiltonian models describing a multilevel system, with a ground state and a possibly multilevel excited sector, coupled to a multimode boson field via a rotating-wave interaction. We prove explicitly that the system, in the limit in which the coupling is flat with respect to the boson frequencies, is Markovian under sharp measurements in arbitrary bases; we also find necessary and sufficient conditions under which the process is classical, i.e. its family of multitime joint probability distributions …
The interpretation of non-Markovian effects as due to the information exchange between an open quantum system and its environment has been recently formulated in terms of properly regularized entropic quantities, as their revivals in time can be upper bounded by means of quantities describing the storage of information outside the open system [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 030401 (2021)]. Here, we elaborate on the wider mathematical framework of the theory, specifying the key properties that allow us to associate distinguishability quantifiers with the information flow from and towards the open system…
Divisibility of dynamical maps: Schrödinger vs. Heisenberg picture
University of Turku（图尔库大学）；Università degli Studi di Milano（米兰大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Milano（意大利国家核物理研究所米兰分部）；Nicolaus Copernicus University（尼古拉·哥白尼大学）
Entropy production plays a fundamental role in nonequilibrium thermodynamics to quantify the irreversibility of open systems. Its positivity can be ensured for a wide class of setups, but the entropy production rate can become negative sometimes. This is often taken as an indicator of non-Markovian dynamics. We make this link precise by showing under which conditions a negative entropy production rate implies non-Markovian dynamics and when it does not. This is established within a unified language for two setups: (i) the dynamics resulting from a coarse-grained description of a system in cont…
We analyze the relation between CP-divisibility and the lack of information backflow for an arbitrary -- not necessarily invertible -- dynamical map. It is well known that CP-divisibility always implies lack of information backflow. Moreover, these two notions are equivalent for invertible maps. In this letter it is shown that for a map which is not invertible the lack of information backflow always implies the existence of completely positive (CP) propagator which, however, needs not be trace-preserving. Interestingly, for a {\em wide class of image non-increasing dynamical maps} this propaga…
We introduce the resource quantifier of weight of resource for convex quantum resource theories of states with arbitrary resources. We show that it captures the advantage that a resourceful state offers over all possible free states, in the operational task of exclusion of subchannels. Furthermore, we introduce information-theoretic quantities related to exclusion and find a connection between the weight of resource of a state, and the exclusion-type information of ensembles it can generate. These results provide support to a recent conjecture made in the context of convex quantum resource the…
We study the competing effects of simultaneous Markovian and non-Markovian decoherence mechanisms acting on a single spin. We show the existence of a threshold in the relative strength of such mechanisms above which the spin dynamics becomes fully Markovian, as revealed by the use of several non-Markovianity measures. We identify a measure-dependent nested structure of such thresholds, hinting at a causality relationship amongst the various non-Markovianity witnesses used in our analysis. Our considerations are then used to argue the unavoidably non-Markovian evolution of a single-electron qua…
One of the main problems in any quantum resource theory is the characterization of the conversions between resources by means of the free operations of the theory. In this work, we advance on this characterization within the quantum coherence resource theory by introducing the generalized coherence vector of an arbitrary quantum state. The generalized coherence vector is a probability vector that can be interpreted as a concave roof extension of the pure states coherence vector. We show that it completely characterizes the notions of being incoherent, as well as being maximally coherent. Moreo…
Quantifiers and witnesses for the nonclassicality of measurements and of states
Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo（量子计算研究所，滑铁卢大学）；Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Waterloo（物理与天文学系，滑铁卢大学）；Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics（理论物理前沿研究所）
Whenever a physical quantity becomes essential to the realization of useful tasks, it is desirable to define proper measures or monotones to quantify it. In quantum mechanics, coherence, entanglement, and Bell nonlocality are examples of such quantities. Given a quantum state $\varrho$ and a quantifier ${\cal E}(\varrho)$, both arbitrary, it is a hard task to determine ${\cal E}(\varrho^{\otimes N})$. However, if the figure of merit $\cal{E}$ turns out to be additive, we simply have ${\cal E}(\varrho^{\otimes N})=N e$, with $e={\cal E}(\varrho)$. In this work we generalize this useful notion t…
Hierarchies of Gaussian multimode entanglement from thermodynamic quantifiers
Harish-Chandra Research Institute, A CI of Homi Bhabha National Institute（哈里什-钱德拉研究所，霍米·巴巴国立学院成员机构）；NextQuantum Innovation Research Center, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University（首尔大学物理与天文学系下一代量子创新研究中心）
Contextuality has been identified as a potential resource responsible for the quantum advantage in several tasks. It is then necessary to develop a resource-theoretic framework for contextuality, both in its standard and generalized forms. Here we provide a formal resource-theoretic approach for generalized contextuality based on a physically motivated set of free operations with an explicit parametrisation. Then, using an efficient linear programming characterization for the contextual set of prepared-and-measured statistics, we adapt known resource quantifiers for contextuality and nonlocali…
We develop a general theory describing the thermodynamical behavior of open quantum systems coupled to thermal baths beyond perturbation theory. Our approach is based on the exact time-local quantum master equation for the reduced open system states, and on a principle of minimal dissipation. This principle leads to a unique prescription for the decomposition of the master equation into a Hamiltonian part representing coherent time evolution and a dissipator part describing dissipation and decoherence. Employing this decomposition we demonstrate how to define work, heat, and entropy production…
The thermodynamic framework of repeated interactions is generalized to an arbitrary open quantum system in contact with a heat bath. Based on these findings the theory is then extended to arbitrary measurements performed on the system. This constitutes a direct experimentally testable framework in strong coupling quantum thermodynamics. By construction, it provides many quantum stochastic processes and quantum causal models with a consistent thermodynamic interpretation. The setting can be further used, for instance, to rigorously investigate the interplay between non-Markovianity and nonequil…
Uncertainty relations are a distinctive characteristic of quantum theory that impose intrinsic limitations on the precision with which physical properties can be simultaneously determined. The modern work on uncertainty relations employs \emph{entropic measures} to quantify the lack of knowledge associated with measuring non-commuting observables. However, there is no fundamental reason for using entropies as quantifiers; any functional relation that characterizes the uncertainty of the measurement outcomes defines an uncertainty relation. Starting from a very reasonable assumption of invarian…
Based on a recently proposed model of physical reality and an underlying criterion of nonlocality for contexts [A. L. O. Bilobran and R. M. Angelo, Europhys. Lett. {\bf 112}, 40005 (2015)], we introduce a quantifier of realism-based nonlocality for bipartite quantum states, a concept that is profoundly different from Bell nonlocality. We prove that this measure reduces to entanglement for pure states, thus being free of anomalies in arbitrary dimensions, and identify the class of states with null realism-based nonlocality. Then we show that such a notion of nonlocality can be positioned in a l…
Recently, it was argued that the binegativity might be a good quantifier of entanglement for two-qubit states. Like the concurrence and the negativity, the binegativity is also analytically computable quantifier for all two qubits. Based on numerical evidence, it was conjectured that it is a PPT (positive partial transposition) monotone and thus fulfills the criterion to be a good measure of entanglement. In this work, we investigate its behavior under noisy channels which indicate that the binegativity is decreasing monotonically with respect to increasing noise. We also find that the binegat…
We develop a notion of stochastic quantum trajectories. First, we construct a basis set of trajectories, called elementary trajectories, and go on to show that any quantum dynamical process, including those that are non-Markovian, can be expressed as a linear combination of this set. We then show that the set of processes divide into two natural classes: those that can be expressed as convex mixture of elementary trajectories and those that cannot be. The former are shown to be entanglement breaking processes (in each step), while the latter are dubbed coherent processes. This division of proc…
The non-Markovianity of an arbitrary open quantum system is analyzed in reference to the multi-time statistics given by its monitoring at discrete times. On the one hand, we exploit the hierarchy of inhomogeneous transfer tensors, which provides us with relevant information about the role of correlations between the system and the environment in the dynamics. The connection between the transfer-tensor hierarchy and the CP-divisibility property is then investigated, by showing to what extent quantum Markovianity can be linked to a description of the open-system dynamics by means of the composit…
Resource-Theoretic Quantifiers of Weak and Strong Symmetry Breaking: Strong Entanglement Asymmetry and Beyond
Institute for Advanced Study, Kyushu University（九州大学高等研究院）；Department of Physics, Kyushu University（九州大学物理系）；RIKEN Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS)（理研跨学科理论与数学科学中心(iTHEMS)）；Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES)（高等科学研究所(IHES)）；Department of Informatics, Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Kyushu University（九州大学信息科学与电气工程学院信息学系）
A procedure to obtain the dynamics of $N$ independent qudits ($d$-level systems) each interacting with its own reservoir, for any arbitrary initial state, is presented. This is then applied to study the dynamics of the entanglement of two qubits, initially in an extended Werner-like mixed state with each of them in a zero temperature non-Markovian environment. The dependence of the entanglement dynamics on the purity and degree of entanglement of the initial states and on the amount of non-Markovianity is also given. This extends the previous work about non-Markovian effects on the two-qubit e…
