Driven-dissipative quantum systems generically do not satisfy simple notions of detailed balance based on the time symmetry of correlation functions. We show that such systems can nonetheless exhibit a hidden time-reversal symmetry which most directly manifests itself in a doubled version of the original system prepared in an appropriate entangled thermofield double state. This hidden time-reversal symmetry has a direct operational utility: it provides a general method for finding exact solutions of non-trivial steady states. Special cases of this approach include the coherent quantum absorber and complex-$P$ function methods from quantum optics. We also show that hidden TRS has observable consequences even in single-system experiments, and can be broken by the non-trivial combination of nonlinearity, thermal fluctuations, and driving. To illustrate our ideas, we analyze concrete examples of driven qubits and nonlinear cavities. These systems exhibit hidden time-reversal symmetry but not conventional detailed balance.
We report on the experimental investigation of the fluctuation properties in the resonance frequency spectra of a flat resonator simulating a dissipative quantum billiard subject to partial time-reversal invariance violation (TIV) which is induced by two magnetized ferrites. The cavity has the shape of a quarter bowtie billiard of which the corresponding classical dynamics is chaotic. Due to dissipation it is impossible to identify a complete list of resonance frequencies. Based on a random-matrix theory approach we derive analytical expressions for statistical measures of short- and long-rang…
We study the ensemble of complex symmetric matrices. The ensemble is useful in the study of effect of dissipation on systems with time reversal invariance. We consider the nearest neighbor spacing distribution and spacing ratio to investigate the fluctuation statistics and show that these statistics are similar to that of dissipative chaotic systems with time reversal invariance. We show that, unlike cubic repulsion in eigenvalues of Ginibre matrices, these ensemble exhibits a weaker repulsion. The nearest neighbor spacing distribution exhibits $P(s) \propto -s^3 \log s$ for small spacings. We…
In quantum magnetism, the virtual exchange of particles mediates an interaction between spins. Here, we show that an inelastic Hubbard interaction fundamentally alters the magnetism of the Hubbard model due to dissipation in spin-exchange processes, leading to sign reversal of magnetic correlations in dissipative quantum dynamics. This mechanism is applicable to both fermionic and bosonic Mott insulators, and can naturally be realized with ultracold atoms undergoing two-body inelastic collisions. The dynamical reversal of magnetic correlations can be detected by using a double-well optical lat…
One-way nonreciprocal interactions between two quantum systems are typically described by a cascaded quantum master equation, and rely on an effective breaking of time-reversal symmetry as well as the balancing of coherent and dissipative interactions. Here, we present a new approach for obtaining nonreciprocal quantum interactions that is completely distinct from cascaded quantum systems, and that does not in general require broken TRS. Our method relies on a local gauge symmetry present in any Markovian Lindblad master equation. This new kind of quantum nonreciprocity has many implications, …
Repulsive and attractive interactions usually lead to very different physics. Striking exceptions exist in the dynamics of driven-dissipative quantum systems. For the example of a photonic Bose-Hubbard dimer, we establish a one-to-one mapping relating the cases of onsite repulsion and attraction. We prove that the mapping is valid for an entire class of Markovian open quantum systems with time-reversal invariant Hamiltonian and physically meaningful inverse-sign Hamiltonian. To underline the broad applicability of the mapping, we illustrate the one-to-one correspondence between the nonequilibr…
Exact solution of a boundary-driven transverse-field Ising model with hidden time-reversal symmetry
Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）
Understanding whether dissipation in an open quantum system is truly quantum is a question of both fundamental and practical interest. We consider n qubits subject to correlated Markovian dephasing and present a sufficient condition for when bath-induced dissipation can generate system entanglement and hence must be considered quantum. Surprisingly, we find that the presence or absence of time-reversal symmetry plays a crucial role: broken time-reversal symmetry is required for dissipative entanglement generation. Further, simply having nonzero bath susceptibilities is not enough for the dissi…
The study of thermodynamic fluctuations allows one to relate the free energy difference between two equilibrium states with the work done on a system through processes far from equilibrium. This finding plays a crucial role in the quantum regime, where the definition of work becomes non-trivial. Based on these relations, here we develop a simple interferometric method allowing a direct estimation of the work distribution and the average dissipative work during a driven thermodynamic process by superposing the forward and time-reversal evolutions of the process. We show that our scheme provides…
Quantum coherence and non-Markovianity of an atom in dissipative cavity under weak measurement are investigated in this work. We find that, the quantum coherence obviously depends on the atomic initial state, the strength of the weak measurement and its reversal, the atom-cavity coupling constant and the non-Markovian effecct. The more obvious the weak measurement effect is, the better the protection of coherence is. The quantum coherence is preserved more efficiently for lager the atom-cavity coupling. The stronger the non-Markovian effect, the more slowly the coherence reduces. This is, the …
We report on the experimental study of an exceptional point (EP) in a dissipative microwave billiard with induced time-reversal invariance (T) violation. The associated two-state Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian and non-symmetric. It is determined experimentally on a narrow grid in a parameter plane around the EP. At the EP the size of T violation is given by the relative phase of the eigenvector components. The eigenvectors are adiabatically transported around the EP, whereupon they gather geometric phases and in addition geometric amplitudes different from unity.
The understanding of symmetry operations has brought enormous advancements in physics, ranging from elementary particle to condensed matter systems. In quantum mechanics, symmetry operations are described by either unitary or antiunitary operators, where the latter are unphysical transformations that cannot be realized in physical systems. So far, quantum simulators of unitary and dissipative processes, the only allowed physical dynamics, have been realized in key experiments. Here, we present an embedding quantum simulator able to encode unphysical operations in a multilevel single trapped io…
Laser technology has developed and accelerated photo-induced nonequilibrium physics from both scientific and engineering viewpoints. The Floquet engineering, i.e., controlling material properties and functionalities by time-periodic drives, is a forefront of quantum physics of light-matter interaction, but limited to ideal dissipationless systems. For the Floquet engineering extended to a variety of materials, it is vital to understand the quantum states emerging in a balance of the periodic drive and energy dissipation. Here we derive the general description for nonequilibrium steady states (…
We show that any optical dissipative structure supported by degenerate optical parametric oscillators contains a special transverse mode that is free from quantum fluctuations when measured in a balanced homodyne detection experiment. The phenomenon is not critical as it is independent of the system parameters and, in particular, of the existence of bifurcations. This result is a consequence of the spatial symmetry breaking introduced by the dissipative structure. Effects that could degrade the squeezing level are considered.
We find the structure of generators of norm continuous quantum Markov semigroups on B(h) that are symmetric with respect to the scalar product tr(ρ^{1/2}xρ^{1/2}y) induced by a faithful normal invariant state invariant state ρand satisfy two quantum generalisations of the classical detailed balance condition related with this non-commutative notion of symmetry: the so-called standard detailed balance condition and the standard detailed balance condition with an antiunitary time reversal.
This study aims to provide evidence regarding the emergence of a class of dissipative time crystals when $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry of the systems is restored in collective spin systems with Lindblad dynamics. First, we show that a standard model of boundary time crystals (BTCs) satisfies the Liouvillian $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetry, and prove that BTC exists only when the stationary state is $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetric in the large-spin limit. Also, a similar statement is confirmed numerically for another BTC model. In addition, the mechanism of the appearance of BTCs is discussed through the developmen…
A cornerstone of the theory of phase transitions is the observation that many-body systems exhibiting a spontaneous symmetry breaking in the thermodynamic limit generally show extensive fluctuations of an order parameter in large but finite systems. In this work, we introduce the dynamical analogue of such a theory. Specifically, we consider local dissipative dynamics preparing a steady-state of quantum spins on a lattice exhibiting a discrete or continuous symmetry but with extensive fluctuations in a local order parameter. We show that for all such processes satisfying detailed balance, ther…
We discuss topology in dissipative quantum systems from the perspective of quantum trajectories. The latter emerge in the unraveling of Markovian quantum master equations and/or in continuous quantum measurements. Ensemble-averaging quantum trajectories at the occurrence of quantum jumps, i.e., the jump times, gives rise to a discrete, deterministic evolution which is highly sensitive to the presence of dark states. We show for a broad family of translation-invariant collapse models that the set of dark state-inducing Hamiltonians imposes a nontrivial topological structure on the space of Hami…
We study the nonequilibrium quantum phase transition of an Ising chain in a dissipative cavity driven by an external transverse light field. When driving and dissipation are in balance, the system can reach a nonequilibrium steady state which undergoes a super-radiant phase transition as the driving strength increases. Interestingly, the super-radiant field changes the effective bias of the Ising chain in return and drives its own transition between the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phase. We study the rich physics in this system with sophisticated behavior, and investigate important issues i…
Fundamental interactions are either fully or nearly symmetric under time reversal. But macroscopic phenomena have a definite arrow of time. Though there is no convergence on the origin of time's preferential direction, many researchers believe that the direction of time is towards increasing entropy. In this paper, we provide an alternate point of view. In driven-dissipative nonequilibrium systems forced at large scale, the energy flows from large scales to dissipative scales. This generic and multiscale process breaks time reversal symmetry and principle of detailed balance, thus can yield an…
Kramers' degeneracy theorem underpins many interesting effects in quantum systems with time-reversal symmetry. We show that the generator of dynamics for Markovian open fermionic systems can exhibit an analogous degeneracy, protected by a combination of time-reversal symmetry and the microreversibility (detailed balance) property of systems at thermal equilibrium -- the degeneracy is lifted if either condition is not met. We provide simple examples of this phenomenon and show that the degeneracy is reflected in the single-particle Green's functions. Furthermore, we show that certain experiment…
We theoretically study the non-Hermitian systems, the non-Hermiticity of which arises from the unequal hopping amplitude (UHA) dimers. The distinguishing features of these models are that they have full real spectra if all of the eigenvectors are time-reversal (T) symmetric rather than parity-time-reversal (PT) symmetric, and that their Hermitian counterparts are shown to be an experimentally accessible system, which have the same topological structures as that of the original ones but modulated hopping amplitudes within the unbroken region. Under the reflectionless transmission condition, the…
We derive a tight bound between the quality of estimating a quantum state by measurement and the success probability of undoing the measurement in arbitrary dimensional systems, which completely describes the tradeoff relation between the information gain and reversibility. In this formulation, it is clearly shown that the information extracted from a weak measurement is erased through the reversing process. Our result broadens the information-theoretic perspective on quantum measurement as well as provides a standard tool to characterize weak measurements and reversals.
We consider a class of quantum dissipative semigroup on a von-Neumann algebra which admits a normal invariant state. We investigate asymptotic behavior of the dissipative dynamics and their relation to that of the canonical Markov shift. In case the normal invariant state is also faithful, we also extend the notion of `quantum detailed balance' introduced by Frigerio-Gorini and prove that forward weak Markov process and backward weak Markov process are equivalent by an anti-unitary operator.
We propose a scheme to generate a persistent current in driven-dissipative systems which can be described by the generalized Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation. Our proposal consists of fabricating a rachet-potential shape of the loss-rate profile, which simultaneously breaks the time-reversal and parity-inversion symmetry. Unlike existing schemes to generate a current using a rachet potential in Hermitian systems, no dynamic drive is needed. The basic physics of our scheme is discussed by a simple discrete driven-dissipative GP model, and the results are also verified by a realistic continuous mo…
We present an English translation of Erwin Schrödinger's paper on "On the Reversal of the Laws of Nature". In this paper Schrödinger analyses the idea of time reversal of a diffusion process. Schrödinger's paper acted as a prominent source of inspiration for the works of Bernstein on reciprocal processes and of Kolmogorov on time reversal properties of Markov processes and detailed balance. The ideas outlined by Schrödinger also inspired the development of probabilistic interpretations of quantum mechanics by Fényes, Nelson and others as well as the notion of "Euclidean Quantum Mechanics" as p…
