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 channel, two independent qubits locally interacting with leaky cavities, V-type and $Λ$-type three-level atom (qutrit) in a dissipative cavity. We show that the proposed HSS-based non-Markovianity witness detects memory effects in agreement with the well-established trace distance-based witness, being sensitive to system-environment information backflows.
We show the connection between a witness that detects dynamical maps with initial system-environment correlations and a witness that detects non-Markovian open quantum systems. Our analysis is based on studying the role that state preparation plays in witnessing violations of contractivity of open quantum system dynamics. Contractivity is a property of some quantum processes where the trace distance of density matrices decrease with time. From this, we show how a witness of initial-correlations is an upper bound to a witness of non-Markovianity. We discuss how this relationship shows further c…
Gilbert proposed an algorithm for bounding the distance between a given point and a convex set. In this article we apply the Gilbert's algorithm to get an upper bound on the Hilbert-Schmidt distance between a given state and the set of separable states. While Hilbert Schmidt Distance does not form a proper entanglement measure, it can nevertheless be useful for witnessing entanglement. We provide here a few methods based on the Gilbert's algorithm that can reliably qualify a given state as strongly entangled or practically separable, while being computationally efficient. The method also outpu…
We provide further characterization of non-Markovian quantum dynamics based on the concept of divisible dynamical maps. In analogy to entanglement witness we propose a non-Markovianity witness and introduce the corresponding measure of non-Markovianity. We also provide characterization of non-Markovianity in terms of entropic quantities, fidelity and Wigner-Yanase-Dyson skew information.
We develop a theory of linear witnesses for detecting non-Markovianity, based on the geometric structure of the set of Choi states for all Markovian evolutions having Lindblad type generators. We show that the set of all such Markovian Choi states form a convex and compact set under the small time interval approximation. Invoking geometric Hahn-Banach theorem, we construct linear witnesses to separate a given non-Markovian Choi state from the set of Markovian Choi states. We present examples of such witnesses for dephasing channel and Pauli channel in case of qubits. We further investigate the…
We present a method to detect quantum memory in a non-Markovian process. We call a process Markovian when the environment does not provide a memory that retains correlations across different system-environment interactions. We define two types of non-Markovian processes, depending on the required memory being classical or quantum. We formalise this distinction using the process matrix formalism, through which a process is represented as a multipartite state. Within this formalism, a test for entanglement in a state can be mapped to a test for quantum memory in the corresponding process. This a…
Non-Markovian effects in an open-system dynamics are usually associated to information backflows from the environment to the system. However, the way these backflows manifest and how to detect them is unclear. A natural approach is to study the backflow in terms of the correlations the evolving system displays with another unperturbed system during the dynamics. In this work, we study the power of this approach to witness non-Markovian dynamics using different correlation measures. We identify simple dynamics where the failure of completely-positive divisibility is in one-to-one correspondence…
We employ frames consisting of rank-one projectors (i.e. pure quantum states) and their induced informationally complete quantum measurements (IC-POVMs) to represent generally mixed quantum states by quasi-probability distributions. In the case of discrete frames on finite dimensional systems this results in a vector like representation by quasi-probability vectors, while for the continuous frame of coherent states in continuous variable (CV) systems the approach directly leads to the celebrated representation by Glauber-Sudarshan P-functions and Husimi Q-functions. We explain that the Kolmogo…
Modern applications in quantum computation and quantum communication require the precise characterization of quantum states and quantum channels. In practice, this means that one has to determine the quantum capacity of a physical system in terms of measurable quantities. Witnesses, if properly constructed, succeed in performing this task. We derive a method that is capable to compute witnesses for identifying deterministic evolutions and measurement-induced collapse processes. At the same time, applying the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism, it uncovers the entanglement characteristics of biparti…
The modeling of natural phenomena via a Markov process --- a process for which the future is independent of the past, given the present--- is ubiquitous in many fields of science. Within this context, it is of foremost importance to develop ways to check from the available empirical data if the underlying mechanism is indeed Markovian. A paradigmatic example is given by data processing inequalities, the violation of which is an unambiguous proof of the non-Markovianity of the process. Here, our aim is twofold. First we show the existence of a monogamy-like type of constraints, beyond data proc…
A witness of non-Markovianity based on the Hilbert-Schmidt speed (HSS), a special type of quantum statistical speed, has been recently introduced for low-dimensional quantum systems. Such a non-Markovianity witness is particularly useful, being easily computable since no diagonalization of the system density matrix is required. We investigate the sensitivity of this HSS-based witness to detect non-Markovianity in various high-dimensional and multipartite open quantum systems. We find that the time behaviors of the HSS-based witness are always in agreement with those of quantum negativity or qu…
We propose a new characterization of non-Markovian quantum evolution based on the concept of non-Markovianity degree. It provides an analog of a Schmidt number in the entanglement theory and reveals the formal analogy between quantum evolution and the entanglement theory: Markovian evolution corresponds to a separable state and non-Markovian one is further characterized by its degree. It enables one to introduce a non-Markovinity witness -- an analog of an entanglement witness -- and a family of measures -- an analog of Schmidt coefficients -- and finally to characterize maximally non-Markovia…
The information encoded into an open quantum system that evolves under a Markovian dynamics is always monotonically non-increasing. Nonetheless, for a given quantifier of the information contained in the system, it is in general not clear if for all non-Markovian dynamics it is possible to observe a non-monotonic evolution of this quantity, namely a backflow. We address this problem by considering correlations of finite-dimensional bipartite systems. For this purpose, we consider a class of correlation measures and prove that if the dynamics is non-Markovian there exists at least one element f…
The degree of non-Markovianity allows to characterizing quantum evolutions that depart from a Markovian regime in a similar way as Schmidt number measures the degree of entanglement of pure states. Maximally non-Markovian dynamics are the analogous of maximally entangled states [D. Chruściński and S. Maniscalco, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 120404 (2014)]. Here, we demonstrate that there exists a class of maximally non-Markovian quantum evolutions where the associated environment (degrees of freedom not belonging to the system) obeys a Markovian (memoryless) dynamics, which in turn is unperturbed by …
The question of witnessing or quantifying nonclassicality of quantum systems has been addressed in various ways. For a given system or theory, we propose identifying it with the incompatibility of admissible states. We quantify the nonclassicality of quantum systems using the Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the commutator of two states. As a particular application of this measure, we study the classicalization of a discrete-time quantum walk with a noisy coin.
Optical interferometric tools for probing memory effects
S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences（S. N. Bose 基础科学国家中心）；Indian Statistical Institute（印度统计研究所）；International Institute of Information Technology（国际信息技术学院）；Indian Institute of Technology Goa（印度理工学院果阿分校）
We consider the unitary time evolution of continuous quantum mechanical systems confined to a cavity in contact with a finite bath of variable size. Measures for Markovianity for such finite system-bath configurations are developed in terms of Hilbert-Schmidt distances of time evolving wave packets. The relevant time scales are identified, which characterize pseudo-Markovian transient behavior, boundary scattering induced non-Markovian oscillations at intermediate times, and non-Markovian rephasing events at long time scales. It is shown how these time scales can be controlled by tunable param…
We present explicit evaluations of quantum speed limit times pertinent to the Markovian dynamics of an open continuous-variable system. Specifically, we consider the standard setting of a cavity mode of the quantum radiation field weakly coupled to a thermal bosonic reservoir. The evolution of the field state is ruled by the quantum optical master equation, which is known to have an exact analytic solution. Starting from a pure input state, we employ two indicators of how different the initial and evolved states are, namely, the fidelity of evolution and the Hilbert-Schmidt distance of evoluti…
We investigate entanglement breaking times of Markovian evolutions in discrete and continuous time. In continuous time, we characterize which Markovian evolutions are eventually entanglement breaking, that is, evolutions for which there is a finite time after which any entanglement initially present has been destroyed by the noisy evolution. In the discrete time framework, we consider the entanglement breaking index, that is, the number of times a quantum channel has to be composed with itself before it becomes entanglement breaking. The PPT-square conjecture is that every PPT quantum channel …
We extend the Hilbert-Schmidt (square norm) distance, previously used to define the geometric quantum discord, to define also geometric quantifiers of total and classical correlations. We then compare the dynamics of geometric and entropic quantifiers of the different kinds of correlations in a non-Markovian open two-qubit system under local dephasing. We find that qualitative differences occur only for quantum discords. This is taken to imply that geometric and entropic discords are not, in general, equivalent in describing the dynamics of quantum correlations. We then show that also geometri…
Non-Hermitian systems with parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetry and anti-$\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry give rise to exceptional points (EPs) with intriguing properties related to, e.g., chiral transport and enhanced sensitivity, due to the coalescence of eigenvectors. In this paper, we propose a powerful and easily computable tool, based on the Hilbert-Schmidt speed (HSS), which does not require the diagonalization of the evolved density matrix, to detect exactly the EPs and hence the critical behavior of the (anti-)$\mathcal{PT}\!-$symmetric systems, especially high-dimensional ones. Our theoretic…
In this article, we study the dynamics of quantum correlation measures such as entanglement and measurement-induced nonlocality (MIN). Starting from an arbitrary Bell diagonal mixed states under Markovian local noise such as bit-phase flip, depolarizing and generalized amplitude damping channel, we provide the decays of the entanglement measured by concurrence and quantum correlation captured by different forms of MIN (trace distance, Hilbert-Schmidt norm and relative entropy) as a function of the decoherence parameters. The effect of local noises on the dynamical behaviors of quantum correlat…
We provide a general formula of quantum transfer that includes the non-adiabatic effect under periodic environmental modulation by using full counting statistics in Hilbert-Schmidt space. Applying the formula to an anharmonic junction model that interacts with two bosonic environments within the Markovian approximation, we find that the quantum transfer is divided into the adiabatic (dynamical and geometrical phases) and non-adiabatic contributions. This extension shows the dependence of quantum transfer on the initial condition of the anharmonic junction just before the modulation, as well as…
