Open quantum systems with nearly degenerate energy levels have been shown to exhibit long-lived metastable states in the approach to equilibrium, even when modelled with certain Lindblad-form quantum master equations. This is a result of dramatic separation of timescales due to differences between Liouvillian eigenvalues. These metastable states often have nonzero coherences which die off only in the long time limit once the system reaches thermal equilibrium. We examine two distinct situations that give rise to this effect: one in which dissipative dynamics couple together states only within a nearly degenerate subspace, and one in which they give rise to jumps over finite energy splittings, between separate nearly degenerate subspaces. We find, in each case, that a change of basis can often lead to a representation which more naturally captures the impact of the system-bath interaction than does the energy eigenbasis, revealing that separate timescales are associated with separate processes (e.g. decoherence into a non-energy eigenbasis, decay of population correlations to the initial state). This approach is paired with the inspection of quantum trajectories, which further provide intuition as to how open system evolution is characterized when coherent oscillations, thermal relaxation, and decoherence all occur simultaneously.
A nonlinear quantum-classical transition wave equation is proposed for dissipative systems within the Caldirola-Kanai model. Equivalence of this transition equation to a scaled Schrödinger equation is proved. The dissipative dynamics is then studied in terms of what we call scaled trajectories following the standard procedure used in Bohmian mechanics. These trajectories depend on a continuous parameter allowing us a smooth transition from Bohmian to classical trajectories. Arrival times and actual momentum distribution functions are also analyzed. The propagation of a Gaussian wave packet in …
Recent experiments show that periodic drives on dipolar systems lead to long-lived prethermal states. These systems are weakly coupled to the environment and reach prethermal states in a timescale much shorter than the timescale for thermalization. Such nearly-closed systems have previously been analyzed using Floquet formalism, which shows the emergence of a prethermal plateau. We use a fluctuation-regulated quantum master equation (FRQME) to describe these systems. In addition to the system-environment coupling, FRQME successfully captures the dissipative effect from the various local intera…
We show that current noisy quantum computers are ideal platforms for the simulation of quantum many-body dynamics in generic open systems. We demonstrate this using the IBM Quantum Computer as an experimental platform for confirming the theoretical prediction from [Phys. Rev. Lett.124, 100604 (2020)] of an emergent hierarchy of relaxation timescales of many-body observables involving different numbers of qubits. Using different protocols, we leverage the intrinsic dissipation of the machine responsible for gate errors, to implement a quantum simulation of generic (i.e. structureless) local dis…
Dissipative quantum tunnelling through an inverted parabolic barrier is considered in the presence of an electric field. A Schrödinger-Langevin or Kostin quantum classical transition wave equation is used and applied resulting in a scaled differential equation of motion. A Gaussian wave packet solution to the resulting scaled Kostin nonlinear equation is assumed and compared to the same solution for the scaled linear Caldirola-Kanai equation. The resulting scaled trajectories are obtained at different dynamical regimes and friction cases, showing the gradual decoherence process in this open dy…
We introduce a protocol to transfer excitations between two noninteracting qubits via purely dissipative processes (i.e., in the Lindblad master equation there is no coherent interaction between the qubits). The fundamental ingredients are the presence of collective (i.e. nonlocal) dissipation and unbalanced local dissipation rates (the qubits dissipate at different rates). The resulting quantum trajectories show that the measurement backaction changes the system wave function and induces a passage of the excitation from one qubit to the other. While similar phenomena have been witnessed for a…
Recently, several studies involving open quantum systems which possess a strong symmetry have observed that every individual trajectory in the Monte Carlo unravelling of the master equation will dynamically select a specific symmetry sector to freeze into in the long-time limit. This phenomenon has been termed dissipative freezing, and in this paper we argue, by presenting several simple mathematical perspectives on the problem, that it is a general consequence of the presence of a strong symmetry in an open system with only a few exceptions. Using a number of example systems we illustrate the…
We investigate two different kinds of quantum trajectories for a nonlinear photon resonator subject to two-photon pumping, a configuration recently studied for the generation of photonic Schroedinger cat states. In the absence of feedback control and in the strong-driving limit, the steady-state density matrix is a statistical mixture of two states with equal weight. While along a single photon-counting trajectory the systems intermittently switches between an odd and an even cat state, we show that upon homodyne detection the situation is different. Indeed, homodyne quantum trajectories revea…
We apply the large-deviation method to study trajectories in dissipative quantum systems. We show that in the long time limit the statistics of quantum jumps can be understood from thermodynamic arguments by exploiting the analogy between large-deviation and free-energy functions. This approach is particularly useful for uncovering properties of rare dissipative trajectories. We also prove, via an explicit quantum mapping, that rare trajectories of one system can be realized as typical trajectories of an alternative system.
We prove that the observable telegraph signal accompanying the bistability in the photon-blockade-breakdown regime of the driven and lossy Jaynes--Cummings model is the finite-size precursor of what in the thermodynamic limit is a genuine first-order phase transition. We construct a finite-size scaling of the system parameters to a well-defined thermodynamic limit, in which the system remains the same microscopic system, but the telegraph signal becomes macroscopic both in its timescale and intensity. The existence of such a finite-size scaling completes and justifies the classification of the…
We investigate the non-Markovian quantum dynamics of a hybrid open system consisting of one qubit and one qutrit by employing a stochastic Schrödinger equation to generate diffusive quantum trajectories. We have established an exact quantum state diffusion (QSD) equation for the dissipative qubit-qutrit system coupled to a bosonic heat bath at zero temperature. As an important application, the non-Markovian QSD equation is employed to simulate the entanglement decay and generation measured by negativity. Finally, some steady state properties of the hybrid system are also discussed.
The agenda of Dissipative Quantum Chaos is to create a toolbox which would allow us to categorize open quantum systems into "chaotic" and "regular" ones. Two approaches to this categorization have been proposed recently. One of them is based on spectral properties of generators of open quantum evolution. The other one utilizes the concept of Lyapunov exponents to analyze quantum trajectories obtained by unraveling this evolution. By using two quantum models, we relate the two approaches and try to understand whether there is an agreement between the corresponding categorizations. Our answer is…
We propose an efficient numerical method to compute configuration averages of observables in disordered open quantum systems whose dynamics can be unraveled via stochastic trajectories. We prove that the optimal sampling of trajectories and disorder configurations is simply achieved by considering one random disorder configuration for each individual trajectory. As a first application, we exploit the present method to the study the role of disorder on the physics of the driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model in two different regimes: (i) for strong interactions, we explore the dissipative physi…
In driven-dissipative systems, the presence of a strong symmetry guarantees the existence of several steady states belonging to different symmetry sectors. Here we show that, when a system with a strong symmetry is initialized in a quantum superposition involving several of these sectors, each individual stochastic trajectory will randomly select a single one of them and remain there for the rest of the evolution. Since a strong symmetry implies a conservation law for the corresponding symmetry operator on the ensemble level, this selection of a single sector from an initial superposition enta…
We extend the time-dependent variational principle to the setting of dissipative dynamics. This provides a locally optimal (in time) approximation to the dynamics of any Lindblad equation within a given variational manifold of mixed states. In contrast to the pure-state setting there is no canonical information geometry for mixed states and this leads to a family of possible trajectories --- one for each information metric. We focus on the case of the operationally motivated family of monotone riemannian metrics and show further, that in the particular case where the variational manifold is gi…
In this review we deal with open (dissipative and stochastic) quantum systems within the Bohmian mechanics framework which has the advantage to provide a clear picture of quantum phenomena in terms of trajectories, originally in configuration space. The gradual decoherence process is studied from linear and nonlinear Schrödinger equations through Bohmian trajectories as well as by using the so-called quantum-classical transition differential equation through scaled trajectories. This transition is governed by a continuous parameter, the transition parameter, covering these two extreme open dyn…
We discuss some problems of dissipative chaos for open quantum systems in the framework of semiclassical and quantum distributions. For this goal, we propose a driven nonlinear oscillator with time-dependent coefficients, i.e. with time-dependent Kerr-nonlinearity and time-modulated driving field. This model showing both regular and chaotic dynamics in the classical limit is realized in several experimental schemes. Quantum dissipative chaos is analyzed on the base of numerical method of quantum trajectories. Three quantities are studied: the Wigner function of oscillatory mode from the point …
Dissipative adaptation is a general thermodynamic mechanism that explains self-organization in a broad class of driven classical many-body systems. It establishes how the most likely (adapted) states of a system subjected to a given drive tend to be those following trajectories of highest work absorption, followed by dissipated heat to the reservoir. Here, we extend the dissipative adaptation phenomenon to the quantum realm. We employ a fully-quantized exactly solvable model, where the source of work on a three-level system is a single-photon pulse added to a zero-temperature infinite environm…
Two-time correlations are a crucial tool to probe the dynamics of many-body systems. We use these correlation functions to study the dynamics of dissipative quantum systems. Extending the adiabatic elimination method, we show that the correlations can display two distinct behaviors, depending on the observable of interest: a fast exponential decay, with a timescale of the order of the dissipative coupling, or a much slower dynamics. We apply this formalism to bosons in a double well subjected to phase noise. While the single-particle correlations decay exponentially, the density-density correl…
We discuss the short-time perturbative expansion of the linear entropy for finite-dimensional quantum systems whose dynamics can be effectively described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We derive a timescale for the degree of mixedness for an input state undergoing non-Hermitian dynamics and specialize these results in the case of a driven-dissipative two-level system. Next, we derive a timescale for the growth of mixedness for bipartite quantum systems that depends on the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. In the Hermitian limit, this result recovers the perturbative expansion for coherence…
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…
Quantum Transport in Disordered Spin Networks: Emergent Timescales and Competing Pathways
The Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem（耶路撒冷希伯来大学拉卡赫物理研究所）；Inst. of Applied Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem（耶路撒冷希伯来大学应用物理研究所）；Vector Institute（矢量研究所）；Department of Chemistry and Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control, University of Toronto（多伦多大学化学系及量子信息与量子控制中心）
We construct a class of variational methods for the study of open quantum systems based on Gaussian ansatzes for the quantum trajectory formalism. Gaussianity in the conjugate position and momentum quadratures is distinguished from Gaussianity in density and phase. We apply these methods to a driven-dissipative Kerr cavity where we study dephasing and the stationary states throughout the bistability regime. Computational cost proves to be similar to the truncated Wigner (TWA) method, with at most quadratic scaling in system size. Meanwhile, strong correspondence with the numerically exact traj…
We introduce a class of dissipative quantum spin models with local interactions and without quenched disorder that show glassy behaviour. These models are the quantum analogs of the classical facilitated spin models. Just like their classical counterparts, quantum facilitated models display complex glassy dynamics despite the fact that their stationary state is essentially trivial. In these systems, dynamical arrest is a consequence of kinetic constraints and not of static ordering. These models display a quantum version of dynamic heterogeneity: the dynamics towards relaxation is spatially co…
Quantum systems interacting with their environments can exhibit complex non-equilibrium states that are tempting to be interpreted as quantum analogs of chaotic attractors. Yet, despite many attempts, the toolbox for quantifying dissipative quantum chaos remains very limited. In particular, quantum generalizations of Lyapunov exponent, the main quantifier of classical chaos, are established only within the framework of continuous measurements. We propose an alternative generalization which is based on the unraveling of a quantum master equation into an ensemble of so-called 'quantum jump' traj…
We describe how to characterize dynamical phase transitions in open quantum systems from a purely dynamical perspective, namely, through the statistical behavior of quantum jump trajectories. This approach goes beyond considering only properties of the steady state. While in small quantum systems dynamical transitions can only occur trivially at limiting values of the controlling parameters, in many-body systems they arise as collective phenomena and within this perspective they are reminiscent of thermodynamic phase transitions. We illustrate this in open models of increasing complexity: a th…
Entanglement is the central resource in adiabatic quantum transport. Dephasing affects the availability of that resource by biasing trajectories, driving transitions between success and failure. This depletion of entanglement is important for the practical implementation of quantum technologies. We present a new perspective on the failure of adiabatic computation by understanding the failure of adiabatic transport as a dynamical phase transition. These ideas are demonstrated in a toy model of adiabatic quantum transport in a two spin system.
We study the non-equilibrium many-body dynamics of a cold gas of ground state alkali atoms weakly admixed by Rydberg states with laser light. On a timescale shorter than the lifetime of the dressed states, effective dipole-dipole or van der Waals interactions between atoms can lead to the formation of strongly correlated phases, such as atomic crystals. Using a semiclassical approach, we study the long-time dynamics where decoherence and dissipative processes due to spontaneous emission and blackbody radiation dominate, leading to heating and melting of atomic crystals as well as particle loss…
We consider a class of either fermionic or bosonic noninteracting open quantum chains driven by dissipative interactions at the boundaries and study the interplay of coherent transport and dissipative processes, such as bulk dephasing and diffusion. Starting from the microscopic formulation, we show that the dynamics on large scales can be described in terms of fluctuating hydrodynamics. This is an important simplification as it allows us to apply the methods of macroscopic fluctuation theory to compute the large deviation (LD) statistics of time-integrated currents. In particular, this permit…
We present a general approach to derive Lindblad master equations for a subsystem whose dynamics is coupled to dissipative bosonic modes. The derivation relies on a Schrieffer-Wolff transformation which allows to eliminate the bosonic degrees of freedom after self-consistently determining their state as a function of the coupled quantum system. We apply this formalism to the dissipative Dicke model and derive a Lindblad master equation for the atomic spins, which includes the coherent and dissipative interactions mediated by the bosonic mode. This master equation accurately predicts the Dicke …
