Recent developments in practical quantum engineering and control techniques have allowed significant developments for experimental studies of open quantum systems and decoherence engineering. Indeed, it has become possible to test experimentally various theoretical, mathematical, and physical concepts related to non-Markovian quantum dynamics. This includes experimental characterization and quantification of non-Markovian memory effects and proof-of-principle demonstrations how to use them for certain quantum communication and information tasks. We describe here recent experimental advances for open system studies, focussing in particular to non-Markovian dynamics including the applications of memory effects, and discuss the possibilities for ultimate control of decoherence and open system dynamics.
During the last ten years, the studies on non-Markovian open system dynamics has become increasingly popular and having contributions from diverse set of research communities. This interest has arisen due to fundamental problematics how to define and quantify memory effects in the quantum domain, how to exploit and develop applications based on them, and also due to the question what are the ultimate limits for controlling open system dynamics. We give here a simple theoretical introduction to the basic approaches to define and quantify quantum non-Markovianity -- also highlighting their conne…
The non-Markovia dynamics of quantum evolution plays an important role in open quantum sytem. However, how to quantify non-Markovian behavior and what can be obtained from non- Markovianity are still open questions, especially in complex solid systems. Here we address the problem of quantifying non-Markovianity with entanglement in a genuine noisy solid state system at room temperature. We observed the non-Markovianity of quantum evolution with entanglement. By prolonging entanglement with dynamical decoupling, we can reveal the non-Markovianity usually concealed in the environment and obtain …
We prove the Zeno limit $N^{3/2}$ of the quantum Fisher information for frequency estimation with a general initial state of $N$ two-level atoms in the presence of local non-Markovian dephasing noise, which was demonstrated for a GHZ state by A. W. Chin, S. F. Huelga, M. B. Plenio (2012). For collective dephasing we prove that non-Markovian noise allows for better scaling for both correlated and uncorelated states. The quantum enhancement in precision is at least as good as in the local case.
We propose an all-optical experiment to quantify non-Markovianity in an open quantum system through quantum coherence of a single quantum bit. We use an amplitude damping channel implemented by an optical setup with an intense laser beam simulating a single-photon polarization. The optimization over initial states required to quantify non-Markovianity is analytically evaluated. The experimental results are in a very good agreement with the theoretical predictions.
We characterize to what extent it is possible to modify the stationary states of a quantum dynamical semigroup, that describes the irreversible evolution of a two-level system, by means of an auxiliary two-level system. We consider systems that can be initially entangled or uncorrelated. We find that the indirect control of the stationary states is possible, even if there are not initial correlations, under suitable conditions on the dynamical parameters characterizing the evolution of the joint system.
We explore the effects of frequent, impulsive quantum nondemolition measurements of the energy of two-level systems (TLS), alias qubits, in contact with a thermal bath. The resulting entropy and temperature of both the system and the bath are found to be completely determined by the measurement rate, and unrelated to what is expected by standard thermodynamical rules that hold for Markovian baths. These anomalies allow for very fast control of heating, cooling and state-purification (entropy reduction) of qubits, much sooner than their thermal equilibration time.
The reaction coordinate (RC) technique is emerging as a significant tool in the study of quantum dissipative dynamics and quantum thermodynamics. With the objective to further establish this tool, here we explore to what extent the method can capture non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems. As a case study, we focus on the pure decoherence model of a spin coupled to a harmonic reservoir. We compare the spin dynamics and measures for non-Markovianity from the exact analytical solution to simulations based on the RC method at the level of a second order quantum master equation. We find th…
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…
When dealing with system-reservoir interactions in an open quantum system, such as a photosynthetic light-harvesting complex, approximations are usually made to obtain the dynamics of the system. One question immediately arises: how good are these approximations, and in what ways can we evaluate them? Here, we propose to use entanglement and a measure of non-Markovianity as benchmarks for the deviation of approximate methods from exact results. We apply two frequently-used perturbative but non-Markovian approximations to a photosynthetic dimer model and compare their results with that of the n…
We investigate the roles of different environmental models on quantum correlation dynamics of two-qubit composite system interacting with two independent environments. The most common environmental models (the single-Lorentzian model, the squared-Lorentzian model, the two-Lorentzian model and band-gap model) are analyzed. First, we note that for the weak coupling regime, the monotonous decay speed of the quantum correlation is mainly determined by the spectral density functions of these different environments. Then, by considering the strong coupling regime we find that, contrary to what is st…
Non-Markovian dynamics of two interacting two-level qubits coupled to a bosonic bath was previously studied using the quantum-state-diffusion (QSD) equation, where a stochastic state is used to describe the system. In this study, we provide another perspective on this system by deriving the analytic form of the master equation, which describes the system with a reduced density matrix. Then, we validate the master equation by examining entanglement generation and state purity. In addition, with the master equation, we observe the effects from first-order noise and notice that a good asymptotic …
An important challenge in non-Markovian open quantum systems is to understand what information we gain from continuous measurement of an output field. For example, atoms in multimode cavity QED systems provide an exciting platform to study many-body phenomena in regimes where the atoms are strongly coupled amongst themselves and with the cavity, but the strong coupling makes it complicated to infer the conditioned state of the atoms from the output light. In this work we address this problem, describing the reduced atomic state via a conditioned hierarchy of equations of motion, which provides…
We study the coexistence of the quantum Zeno effect and non-Markovianity for a system decaying in a structured bosonic environment and subject to a control field. The interaction with the environment induces decay from the excited to the ground level, which, in turn, is coherently coupled to another meta-stable state. The control of the strength of the coherent coupling between the stable levels allows the engineering of both the dissipation and of the memory effects, without modifying neither the system-reservoir interaction, nor environmental properties. We use this framework in two differen…
Quantum dynamical maps provide suitable mathematical representation of quantum evolutions. It is the very notion of complete positivity which provides a proper mathematical representation of quantum evolution and gives rise to the powerful generalization of unitary evolution of closed Hamiltonian systems. A prominent example of quantum evolution of an open system is a Markovian semigroup. In what follows, we analyze both the semigroups of positive and completely positive maps. In the latter case the dynamics is governed by the celebrated Gorini-Kossakowski-Lindblad-Sudarshan (GKLS) Master Equa…
The investigation of the phenomenon of dephasing assisted quantum transport, which happens when the presence of dephasing benefits the efficiency of this process, has been mainly focused on Markovian scenarios associated with constant and positive dephasing rates in their respective Lindblad master equations. What happens if we consider a more general framework, where time-dependent dephasing rates are allowed, thereby permitting the possibility of non-Markovian scenarios? Does dephasing assisted transport still manifest for non-Markovian dephasing? Here, we address these open questions in a s…
We address the problem of quantifying the non-Markovian character of quantum time-evolutions of general systems in contact with an environment. We introduce two different measures of non-Markovianity that exploit the specific traits of quantum correlations and are suitable for opposite experimental contexts. When complete tomographic knowledge about the evolution is available, our measure provides a necessary and sufficient condition to quantify strictly the non-Markovianity. In the opposite case, when no information whatsoever is available, we propose a sufficient condition for non-Markoviani…
Quantum mechanics is more than the derivation of straightforward theorems about vector spaces, Hilbert spaces and functional analysis. In order to be applicable to experiment and technology, those theorems need interpretation and meaning. Interpretation is to the formalism what a scaffolding in architecture and building construction is to the completed building.
We analyze the convex combinations of non-invertible generalized Pauli dynamical maps. By manipulating the mixing parameters, one can produce a channel with shifted singularities, additional singularities, or even no singularities whatsoever. In particular, we show how to use non-invertible dynamical maps to produce the Markovian semigroup. Interestingly, the maps whose mixing results in a semigroup are generated by the time-local generators and time-homogeneous memory kernels that are not regular; i.e., their formulas contain infinities. Finally, we show how the generators and memory kernels …
We investigate what a snapshot of a quantum evolution - a quantum channel reflecting open system dynamics - reveals about the underlying continuous time evolution. Remarkably, from such a snapshot, and without imposing additional assumptions, it can be decided whether or not a channel is consistent with a time (in)dependent Markovian evolution, for which we provide computable necessary and sufficient criteria. Based on these, a computable measure of `Markovianity' is introduced. We discuss how the consistency with Markovian dynamics can be checked in quantum process tomography. The results als…
Open quantum systems and study of decoherence are important for our fundamental understanding of quantum physical phenomena. For practical purposes, there exists a large number of quantum protocols exploiting quantum resources, e.g. entanglement, which allows to go beyond what is possible to achieve by classical means. We combine concepts from open quantum systems and quantum information science, and give a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration -- with teleportation -- that it is possible to implement efficiently a quantum protocol via non-Markovian open system. The results show that, …
Dynamical decoupling is the leading technique to remove unwanted interactions in a vast range of quantum systems through fast rotations. But what determines the time-scale of such rotations in order to achieve good decoupling? By providing an explicit counterexample of a qubit coupled to a charged particle and magnetic monopole, we show that such time-scales cannot be decided by the decay profile induced by the noise: even though the system shows a quadratic decay (a Zeno region revealing non-Markovian noise), it cannot be decoupled by periodic spin echo pulses, no matter how fast the rotation…
Non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (NMQSD) is a non-relativistic but otherwise exact theory which expresses the reduced density matrix of an arbitrary subsystem, interacting linearly with an uncoupled harmonic oscillator bath, as an average of diadics formed from state vectors which obey stochastic variational-differential equations. The vacuum radiation field can be represented as such an oscillator bath, and so this model is in widespread use in quantum optics. Prior to the development of NMQSD, exact subsystem solutions could only be obtained in a few special cases (e.g. spin-1/2, harmon…
Multi-mode entanglement is investigated in the system composed of $N$ coupled identical harmonic oscillators interacting with a common environment. We treat the problem very general by working with the Hamiltonian without the rotating-wave approximation and by considering the environment as a non-Markovian reservoir to the oscillators. We invoke an $N$-mode unitary transformation of the position and momentum operators and find that in the transformed basis the system is represented by a set of independent harmonic oscillators with only one of them coupled to the environment. Working in the Wig…
We studied the dynamics of entropic uncertainty in Markovian and non-Markovian systems during the charging of open quantum batteries (QBs) mediated by a common dissipation environment. In the non-Markovian regime, the battery is almost fully charged efficiently, and the strong non-Markovian property is beneficial for improving the charging power. In addition, the results show that the energy storage is closely related to the couplings of the charger-reservoir and battery-reservoir; that is, the stronger coupling of a charger-reservoir improves energy storage. In particular, entanglement is req…
The reliability of quantum channels for transmitting information is of profound importance from the perspective of quantum information. This naturally leads to the question as how well a quantum state is preserved when subjected to a quantum channel. We propose a measure of quantumness of channels based on non-commutativity of quantum states that is intuitive and easy to compute. We apply the proposed measure to some well known noise channels, both Markovian as well as non-Markovian and find that the results are in good agreement with those from a recently introduced $l_1$-norm coherence based…
A gauge-invariant theory of small Markovian errors in quantum gate sets
Quantum Performance Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories（桑迪亚国家实验室量子性能实验室）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Quantum New Mexico Institute, University of New Mexico（新墨西哥大学量子新墨西哥学院物理与天文学系）；IonQ
In a long-held preconception, photons play a central role in present-day quantum technologies. But what are sources producing photons one by one good for precisely? Well, in opposition to what many suggest, we show that single-photon sources are not helpful for point to point quantum key distribution because faint laser pulses do the job comfortably. However, there is no doubt about the usefulness of sources producing single photons for future quantum technologies. In particular, we show how single-photon sources could become the seed of a revolution in the framework of quantum communication, …
All physical systems are to some extent open and interacting with their environment. This insight, basic as it may seem, gives rise to the necessity of protecting quantum systems from decoherence in quantum technologies and is at the heart of the emergence of classical properties in quantum physics. The precise decoherence mechanisms, however, are often unknown for a given system. In this work, we make use of an opto-mechanical resonator to obtain key information about spectral densities of its condensed-matter heat bath. In sharp contrast to what is commonly assumed in high-temperature quantu…
What can one infer about the dynamical evolution of quantum systems just by symmetry considerations? For Markovian dynamics in finite dimensions, we present a simple construction that assigns to each symmetry of the generator a family of scalar functions over quantum states that are monotonic under the time evolution. The aforementioned monotones can be utilized to identify states that are non-reachable from an initial state by the time evolution and include all constraints imposed by conserved quantities, providing a generalization of Noether's theorem for this class of dynamics. As a special…
We study the system of two localized detectors (oscillators) interacting through a massless quantum field in a vacuum state via an Unruh-DeWitt coupling. This system admits an exact solution providing a good model for addressing fundamental issues in particle-field interactions, causality and locality in quantum field measurements that are relevant to proposed quantum experiments in space. Our analysis of the exact solution leads to the following results. (i) Common approximations used in the study of analogous open quantum systems fail when the distance between the detectors becomes of the or…
Although quantum coherence is a basic trait of quantum mechanics, the presence of coherences in the quantum description of a certain phenomenon does not rule out the possibility to give an alternative description of the same phenomenon in purely classical terms. Here, we give definite criteria to determine when and to what extent quantum coherence is equivalent to non-classicality. We prove that a Markovian multi-time statistics obtained from repeated measurements of a non-degenerate observable cannot be traced back to a classical statistics if and only if the dynamics is able to generate cohe…
Currently, there is no systematic way to describe a quantum process with memory solely in terms of experimentally accessible quantities. However, recent technological advances mean we have control over systems at scales where memory effects are non-negligible. The lack of such an operational description has hindered advances in understanding physical, chemical and biological processes, where often unjustified theoretical assumptions are made to render a dynamical description tractable. This has led to theories plagued with unphysical results and no consensus on what a quantum Markov (memoryles…
The filter function formalism quantitatively describes the dephasing of a qubit by a bath that causes Gaussian fluctuations in the qubit energies with an arbitrary noise power spectrum. Here, we extend this formalism to account for more general types of noise that couple to the qubit through terms that do not commute with the qubit's bare Hamiltonian. Our approach applies to any power spectrum that generates slow noise fluctuations in the qubit's evolution. We demonstrate our formalism in the case of singlet-triplet qubits subject to both quasistatic nuclear noise and $1/ω^α$ charge noise and …
Effective descriptions accounting for the evolution of quantum systems that are acted on by a bath are desirable. As the number of bath degrees of freedom increases and full quantum simulations turn out computationally prohibitive, simpler models become essential to understand and gain an insight into the main physical mechanisms involved in the system dynamics. In this regard, vibrational decoherence of an I$_2$ diatomics is tackled here within the framework of Markovian quantum state diffusion. The I$_2$ dynamics are analyzed in terms of an effective decoherence rate, $Λ$, and the specific c…
The paradigmatic spin-boson model considers a spin degree of freedom interacting with an environment typically constituted by a continuum of bosonic modes. This ubiquitous model is of relevance in a number of physical systems where, in general, one has neither control over the bosonic modes, nor the ability to tune distinct interaction mechanisms. Despite this apparent lack of control, we present a suitable transformation that approximately maps the spin-boson dynamics into that of a tunable multiphoton Jaynes-Cummings model undergoing dissipation. Interestingly, the latter model describes the…
We provide an in-depth and thorough treatment of the validity of the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) in an open quantum system. We find that when it is introduced after tracing out the environment, all timescales of the open system are correctly reproduced, but the details of the quantum state may not be. The RWA made before the trace is more problematic: it results in incorrect values for environmentally-induced shifts to system frequencies, and the resulting theory has no Markovian limit. We point out that great care must be taken when coupling two open systems together under the RWA. Thou…
Phonon interactions are inevitable in cavity quantum electrodynamical systems based on solid-state emitters or fluorescent molecules, where vibrations of the lattice or chemical bonds couple to the electronic degrees of freedom. Due to the non-Markovian response of the vibrational environment, it remains a significant theoretical challenge to describe such effects in a computationally efficient manner. This is particularly pronounced when the emitter-cavity coupling is comparable to or larger than the typical phonon energy range, and polariton formation coincides with vibrational dressing of t…
We explore the impact of long-range memory on the properties of a family of quantum walks in a one-dimensional lattice and discrete time, which can be understood as the quantum version of the classical "Elephant Random Walk" non-Markovian process. This Elephant Quantum Walk is robustly superballistic with the standard deviation showing a constant exponent, $σ\propto t^{3/ 2}$ , whatever the quantum coin operator, on which the diffusion coefficient is dependent. On the one hand, this result indicates that contrarily to the classical case, the degree of superdiffusivity in quantum non- Markovian…
In view of controlling finite dimensional open quantum systems, we provide a unified Lie-semigroup framework describing the structure of completely positive trace-preserving maps. It allows (i) to identify the Kossakowski-Lindblad generators as the Lie wedge of a subsemigroup, (ii) to link properties of Lie semigroups such as divisibility with Markov properties of quantum channels, and (iii) to characterise reachable sets and controllability in open systems. We elucidate when time-optimal controls derived for the analogous closed system already give good fidelities in open systems and when a m…
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…
The concept of a controlled flow of a dynamical system, especially when the controlling process feeds information back about the system, is of central importance in control engineering. In this paper we build on the ideas presented by Bouten and van Handel (L. Bouten, R. van Handel, "On the separation principle of quantum control", in Quantum Stochastics and Information: Statistics, Filtering and Control, World Scientific, 2008) and develop a general theory of quantum feedback. We elucidate the relationship between the controlling processes $Z$ and the measured process $Y$, and to this end mak…
