We present a general master equation, correct to second order in the system-environment coupling strength, that takes into account the initial system-environment correlations. We assume that the system and its environment are in a joint thermal equilibrium state, and thereafter a unitary operation is performed to prepare the desired initial system state, with the system Hamiltonian possibly changing thereafter as well. We show that the effect of the initial correlations shows up in the second-order master equation as an additional term, similar in form to the usual second-order term describing relaxation and decoherence in quantum systems. We apply this master equation to a generalization of the paradigmatic spin-boson model, namely a collection of two-level systems interacting with a common environment of harmonic oscillators, as well as a collection of two-level systems interacting with a common spin environment. We demonstrate that, in general, the initial system-environment correlations need to be accounted for in order to accurately obtain the system dynamics.
We show that the exact master equation incorporating initial correlations for open quantum systems, within the Nakajima-Zwanzig operator-projection method, is a homegenous master equation for the reduced density matrix. We also derive explicitly the exact master equation for a large class of bosonic and fermionic open quantum systems incorporating initial correlations, the resulting master equation is homogenous. We find that the effects of the initial correlations can be fully embedded into the fluctuation dynamics through the exact homogenous master equation. Also a generalized nonequilibriu…
We derive a family of stochastic master equations describing homodyne measurement of multi-qubit diagonal observables in circuit quantum electrodynamics. In the regime where qubit decay can be neglected, our approach replaces the polaron-like transformation of previous work, which required a lengthy calculation for the physically interesting case of three qubits and two resonator modes. The technique introduced here makes this calculation straightforward and manifestly correct. Using this technique, we are able to show that registers larger than one qubit evolve under a non-Markovian master eq…
An experimentally realizable model based on the interaction between an excited two-level atom and a radiation field inside two quantum electrodynamics cavities is proposed. It consists of sending an excited two-level atom through two serial cavities which contain the radiation field. Hence, the Lindblad master equation described the reduced density matrix of the joint-joint field system inside the cavities is exactly solved in Markovian and non-Markovian regimes. However, the rate of entanglement inherent in the total field-field system are evaluated using various witnesses of entanglement suc…
A method for reconstructing joint photon-number distributions of twin beams from the experimental photocount histograms is suggested and experimentally implemented. Contrary to the standard reconstruction methods, it incorporates spatial noise reduction based on spatial pairing of photons. Superior performance of the method above the usual one for the maximum-likelihood approach is demonstrated.
Master equation-based model for infrared-based magnetometry with nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond cavities: a path to sub-picotesla sensitivity at sub-millimeter scales
Measurement and feedback control are essential features of quantum science, with applications ranging from quantum technology protocols to information-to-work conversion in quantum thermodynamics. Theoretical descriptions of feedback control are typically given in terms of stochastic equations requiring numerical solutions, or are limited to linear feedback protocols. Here we present a formalism for continuous quantum measurement and feedback, both linear and nonlinear. Our main result is a quantum Fokker-Planck master equation describing the joint dynamics of a quantum system and a detector w…
We study the Markovian dynamics of a collection of n quantum systems coupled to an irreversible environmental channel consisting of a stream of n entangled qubits. Within the framework of repeated quantum interactions, we derive the master equation that describes the dynamics of the composite quantum system. We investigate the evolution of the joint system for two-qubit environments and find that (1) the presence of antidiagonal coherences (in the local basis) in the environment is a necessary condition for entangling two remote systems, and (2) that maximally entangled two-qubit baths are an …
A well-known situation in which a non-Markovian dynamics of an open quantum system $S$ arises is when this is coherently coupled to an auxiliary system $M$ in contact with a Markovian bath. In such cases, while the joint dynamics of $S$-$M$ is Markovian and obeys a standard (bipartite) Lindblad-type master equation (ME), this is in general not true for the reduced dynamics of $S$. Furthermore, there are several instances (\eg the dissipative Jaynes-Cummings model) in which a {\it closed} ME for the $S$'s state {\it cannot} even be worked out. Here, we find a class of bipartite Lindblad-type ME…
We discuss a model of a closed quantum evolution of two-qubits where the joint Hamiltonian is so chosen that one of the qubits acts as a bath and thermalize the other qubit which is acting as the system. The corresponding exact master equation for the system is derived. Interestingly, for a specific choice of parameters the master equation takes the Gorini-Kossakowski-Lindblad-Sudarshan (GKLS) form with constant coefficients, representing pumping and damping of a single qubit system. Based on this model we construct an Otto cycle connected to a single qubit bath and study its thermodynamic pro…
Joint measurements of multiple qubits have been shown to open new possibilities for quantum information processing. Here, we present an approach based on homodyne detection to realize such measurements in the dispersive regime of cavity/circuit QED. By changing details of the measurement, the readout can be tuned from extracting only single-qubit to only multi-qubit properties. We obtain a reduced stochastic master equation describing this measurement and its effect on the qubits. As an example, we present results showing parity measurements of two qubits. In this situation, measurement of an …
We put forth a new class of quantum master equations that correctly reproduce the asymptotic state of an open quantum system beyond the infinitesimally weak system-bath coupling limit. Our method is based on incorporating the knowledge of the reduced steady state into its dynamics. The correction not only steers the reduced system towards a correct steady state but also improves the accuracy of the dynamics, thereby refining the archetypal Born-Markov weak-coupling second-order master equations. In case of equilibrium, since a closed form for the steady state exists in terms of a mean force Gi…
In this paper, the exact dynamics of open quantum systems in the presence of initial system-reservoir correlations is investigated for a photonic cavity system coupled to a general non-Markovian reservoir. The exact time-convolutionless master equation incorporating with initial system-reservoir correlations is obtained. The non-Markovian dynamics of the reservoir and the effects of the initial correlations are embedded into the time-dependent coefficients in the master equation. We show that the effects induced by the initial correlations play an important role in the non-Markovian dynamics o…
In this work we study the behaviour of two weakly coupled quantum systems, described by a separable density operator; one of them is a single oscillator, representing a microscopic system, while the other is a set of oscillators which perform the role of a \emph{reservoir} in thermal equilibrium. From the Liouville-Von Neumann equation for the reduced density operator, we devise the master equation that governs the evolution of the microscopic system, incorporating the effects of temperature via Thermofield Dynamics formalism by suitably redefining the vacuum of the macroscopic system. As appl…
We derive the general form of a master equation describing the interaction of an arbitrary multipartite quantum system, consisting of a set of subsystems, with an environment, consisting of a large number of sub-envirobments. Each subsystem "collides" with the same sequence of sub-environments which, in between the collisions, evolve according to a map that mimics relaxations effects. No assumption is made on the specific nature of neither the system nor the environment. In the weak coupling regime, we show that the collisional model produces a correlated Markovian evolution for the joint dens…
A Mean-Field Lindblad Master Equation Framework for Interaction-Driven Decoherence in Solid-State Qubit Ensembles
Department of Chemistry, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校化学系）；Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校安恩和H.J.斯米德航空航天工程科学）
We present a first-principles theoretical analysis of the entanglement of two superconducting qubits in spatially separated microwave cavities by a sequential (cascaded) probe of the two cavities with a coherent mode, that provides a full characterization of both the continuous measurement induced dynamics and the entanglement generation. We use the SLH formalism to derive the full quantum master equation for the coupled qubits and cavities system, within the rotating wave and dispersive approximations, and conditioned equations for the cavity fields. We then develop effective stochastic maste…
We propose a method for deriving Lindblad-like master equations when the environment/reservoir is consigned to a classical description. As a proof of concept, we apply the method to continuous wave (CW) magnetic resonance. We make use of a perturbation scheme we have termed "affine commutation perturbation" (ACP). Unlike traditional perturbation methods, ACP has the advantage of incorporating some effects of the perturbation even at the zeroth-order approximation. Indeed, we concentrate here on the zeroth-order, and show how -- even at this lowest order -- the ACP scheme can still yield non-tr…
We develop a systematic field-theoretical approach to open quantum systems based on condensed-matter many-body methods. The time evolution of the reduced density matrix for the open quantum system is determined by a transmission matrix. Developing diagrammatic perturbation theory, invoking Wick's theorem in connection with a Caldeira-Leggett quantum oscillator environment in thermal equilibrium, the transmission matrix satisfies a Dyson equation characterized by an irreducible kernel. Unlike the Nakajima-Zwanzig and standard approaches, the Dyson equation is equivalent to a general non-Markovi…
We revisit the problem involving two constantly accelerating Unruh-DeWitt detectors using Open Effective Field Theory methods. We study the time evolution of the joint detector state using a Markovian approximation which differs from the standard one taken in the literature. We show that this Markovian limit already implies the complete positivity of the dynamical evolution map without invoking the rotating wave approximation (RWA), in contrast to standard derivations of open system master equations. By calculating explicitly the domain of validity of this Markovian approximation, we argue tha…
In a previous paper [Phys.Rev.E 83, 051911] we have shown that the results of a quantum-mechanical calculation of electronic energy transfer (EET) over aggregates of coupled monomers can be described also by a model of interacting classical electric dipoles in a weak-coupling approximation, which we referred to as the realistic coupling approximation (RCA). The method was illustrated by EET on a simple linear chain of molecules and also by energy transfer on the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex relevant for photosynthesis. The study was limited to electronic degrees of freedom since this is …
