We show that for any finite-dimensional quantum systems the conserved quantities can be characterized by their robustness to small perturbations: for fragile symmetries small perturbations can lead to large deviations over long times, while for robust symmetries their expectation values remain close to their initial values for all times. This is in analogy with the celebrated Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) theorem in classical mechanics. To prove this remarkable result, we introduce a resummation of a perturbation series, which generalizes the Hamiltonian of the quantum Zeno dynamics.
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox is resolved by reconsidering what entangled state is actually prepared, what physical quantities are conserved and the character of the correlation measurements employed.
An extension of the Wigner-Araki-Yanase theorem to multiplicative conserved quantities is presented and approximate versions of the theorem are discussed.
We consider a generalisation of thermodynamics that deals with multiple conserved quantities at the level of individual quantum systems. Each conserved quantity, which, importantly, need not commute with the rest, can be extracted and stored in its own battery. Unlike in standard thermodynamics, where the second law places a constraint on how much of the conserved quantity (energy) that can be extracted, here, on the contrary, there is no limit on how much of any individual conserved quantity that can be extracted. However, other conserved quantities must be supplied, and the second law constr…
Even in the presence of conservation laws, one can perform arbitrary transformations on a system if given access to a suitable reference frame, since conserved quantities may be exchanged between the system and the frame. Here we explore whether these quantities can be separated into different parts of the reference frame, with each part acting as a `battery' for a distinct quantity. For systems composed of spin-$\frac12$ particles, we show that the components of angular momentum $S_x$, $S_y$ and $S_z$ (non-commuting conserved quantities) may be separated in this way, and also provide several …
Conserved quantities are crucial in quantum physics. Here we discuss a general scenario of Hamiltonians. All the Hamiltonians within this scenario share a common conserved quantity form. For unitary parametrization processes, the characteristic operator of this scenario is analytically provided, as well as the corresponding quantum Fisher information (QFI). As the application of this scenario, we focus on two classes of Hamiltonians: su(2) category and canonical category. Several specific physical systems in these two categories are discussed in detail. Besides, we also calculate an alternativ…
Conserved quantities such as energy or the electric charge of a closed system, or the Runge-Lenz vector in Kepler dynamics are determined by its global, local, or accidental symmetries. They were instrumental to advances such as the prediction of neutrinos in the (inverse) beta decay process and the development of self-consistent approximate methods for isolated or thermal many-body systems. In contrast, little is known about conservation laws and their consequences in open systems. Recently, a special class of these systems, called parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric systems, has been inte…
It is possible to prepare a composite qubit-environment system so that its time evolution will guarantee the conservation of a preselected qubit's observable. In general, this observable is not associated with a symmetry. The latter may not even be present in the subsystem. The initial states which lead to such a quantity conserved dynamics form a subspace of the qubit-environment space of states. General construction of this subspace is presented and illustrated by two examples. The first one is the exactly soluble Jaynes-Cummings model and the second is the multi-photon Rabi model.
Electromagnetic waves carry an infinite number of conserved quantities. We give a simple explanation of this fact, which also shows how to write down conserved quantities at will and calculate their associated symmetry transformations. This framework is then used to discuss decompositions of optical angular momentum, and to prove that magnetic helicity is conserved for beams and pulses. Finally we describe an infinite set of electromagnetic conserved quantities that corresponds to the Virasoro generators of conformal field theories. In the quantum case the Virasoro generators acquire a central…
This work derives an analytical formula for the asymptotic state---the quantum state resulting from an infinite number of applications of a general quantum channel on some initial state. For channels admitting multiple fixed or rotating points, conserved quantities---the left fixed/rotating points of the channel---determine the dependence of the asymptotic state on the initial state. The formula stems from a Noether-like theorem stating that, for any channel admitting a full-rank fixed point, conserved quantities commute with that channel's Kraus operators up to a phase. The formula is applied…
Open classical and quantum systems have attracted great interest in the past two decades. These include systems described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with parity-time $(\mathcal{PT})$ symmetry that are best understood as systems with balanced, separated gain and loss. Here, we present an alternative way to characterize and derive conserved quantities, or intertwining operators, in such open systems. As a consequence, we also obtain non-Hermitian or Hermitian operators whose expectations values show single exponential time dependence. By using a simple example of a $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric di…
Over the past two decades, open systems that are described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian have become a subject of intense research. These systems encompass classical wave systems with balanced gain and loss, semiclassical models with mode selective losses, and minimal quantum systems, and the meteoric research on them has mainly focused on the wide range of novel functionalities they demonstrate. Here, we address the following questions: Does anything remain constant in the dynamics of such open systems? What are the consequences of such conserved quantities? Through spectral-decomposition me…
In quantum thermodynamics, effects of finiteness of the baths have been less considered. In particular, there is no general theory which focuses on finiteness of the baths of multiple conserved quantities. Then, we investigate how the optimal performance of generalized heat engines with multiple conserved quantities alters in response to the size of the baths. In the context of general theories of quantum thermodynamics, the size of the baths has been given in terms of the number of identical copies of a system, which does not cover even such a natural scaling as the volume. In consideration o…
We are taught that gauge transformations in classical and quantum mechanics do not change the physics of the problem. Nevertheless here we discuss three broad scenarios where under gauge transformations: (i) conservation laws are not preserved in the usual manner; (ii) non-gauge-invariant quantities can be associated with physical observables; and (iii) there are changes in the physical boundary conditions of the wave function that render it non-single-valued. We give worked examples that illustrate these points, in contrast to general opinions from classic texts. We also give a historical per…
When a measurement is made on a system that is not in an eigenstate of the measured observable, it is often assumed that some conservation law has been violated. Discussions of the effect of measurements on conserved quantities often overlook the possibility of entanglement between the measured system and the preparation apparatus. The preparation of a system in any particular state necessarily involves interaction between the apparatus and the system. Since entanglement is a generic result of interaction, as shown by Gemmer and Mahler[1], and by Durt[2,3] one would expect some nonzero entangl…
Integrability of the XXZ model induces an extensive number of conserved quantities. In this paper we give a closed form expression for the series of local conserved charges of the XXZ model on a closed chain with or without a twist. We prove that each element of the series commutes with the Hamiltonian.
In statistical mechanics, a small system exchanges conserved quantities---heat, particles, electric charge, etc.---with a bath. The small system thermalizes to the canonical ensemble, or the grand canonical ensemble, etc., depending on the conserved quantities. The conserved quantities are represented by operators usually assumed to commute with each other. This assumption was removed within quantum-information-theoretic (QI-theoretic) thermodynamics recently. The small system's long-time state was dubbed ``the non-Abelian thermal state (NATS).'' We propose an experimental protocol for observi…
We outline a procedure for counting and identifying a complete set of local and quasilocal conserved operators in integrable lattice systems. The method yields a systematic generation of all independent, conserved quasilocal operators related to time-average of local operators with a support on up to M consecutive sites. As an example we study the anisotropic Heisenberg spin-1/2 chain and show that the number of independent conserved operators grows linearly with M. Besides the known local operators there exist novel quasilocal conserved quantities in all the parity sectors. The existence of q…
Conserved operator quantities in quantum field theory can be defined via the Noether theorem in the Lagrangian formalism and as generators of some transformations. These definitions lead to generally different conserved operators which are suitable for different purposes. Some relations involving conserved operators are analyzed.
Conserved quantities in a bosonic tight-binding chain with non-Hermitian quartic terms
The University of Tokyo（东京大学）；Institute for Physics of Intelligence, The University of Tokyo（东京大学智能物理研究所）；Trans-Scale Quantum Science Institute, The University of Tokyo（东京大学跨尺度量子科学研究所）
This work is concerned with determination of the steady-state structure of time-independent Lindblad master equations, especially those possessing more than one steady state. The approach here is to treat Lindblad systems as generalizations of unitary quantum mechanics, extending the intuition of symmetries and conserved quantities to the dissipative case. We combine and apply various results to obtain an exhaustive characterization of the infinite-time behavior of Lindblad evolution, including both the structure of the infinite-time density matrix and its dependence on initial conditions. The…
The relaxation of out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) has been studied as a mean to characterize the scrambling properties of a quantum system. We show that the presence of local conserved quantities typically results in, at the fastest, an algebraic relaxation of the OTOC provided (i) the dynamics is local and (ii) the system follows the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Our result relies on the algebraic scaling of the infinite-time value of OTOCs with system size, which is typical in thermalizing systems with local conserved quantities, and on the existence of finite speed of propag…
The out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum systems is one of the most fascinating problems in physics, with outstanding open questions on issues such as relaxation to equilibrium. An area of particular interest concerns few-body systems, where quantum and thermal fluctuations are expected to be especially relevant. In this contribution, we present numerical results demonstrating the impact of conserved quantities (or 'charges') in the outcomes of out-of-equilibrium measurements starting from realistic equilibrium states on a few-body system implementing the Dicke model.
We investigate how symmetries and conserved quantities relate to the occurrence of the boundary time crystal (BTC) phase in a generalized spin model with Lindblad dissipation. BTCs are a non-equilibrium phase of matter in which the system, coupled to an external environment, breaks the continuous time translational invariance. We perform a detailed mean-field study aided by a finite-size analysis of the quantum model of a p,q-spin-interaction system, a generalized p-spin interaction system, which can be implemented in fully-connected spin-1/2 ensembles. We find the following conditions for the…
We show that the subregion entanglement Hamiltonians of excited eigenstates of a quantum many-body system are approximately linear combinations of subregionally (quasi)local approximate conserved quantities, with relative commutation errors $\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{\text{subregion boundary area}}{\text{subregion volume}}\right)$. By diagonalizing an entanglement Hamiltonian superdensity matrix (EHSM) for an ensemble of eigenstates, we can obtain these conserved quantities as the EHSM eigen-operators with nonzero eigenvalues. For free fermions, we find the number of nonzero EHSM eigenvalues is c…
