Gibbs-preserving operations have been studied as one of the standard free processes in quantum thermodynamics. Although they admit a simple mathematical structure, their operational significance has been unclear due to the potential hidden cost to implement them using an operatioanlly motivated class of operations, such as thermal operations. Here, we show that this hidden cost can be infinite -- we present a family of Gibbs-preserving operations that cannot be implemented by thermal operations aided by any finite amount of quantum coherence. Our result implies that there are uncountably many Gibbs-preserving operations that require unbounded thermodynamic resources to implement, raising a question about employing Gibbs-preserving operations as available thermodynamics processes. This finding is a consequence of the general lower bounds we provide for the coherence cost of approximately implementing a certain class of Gibbs-preserving operations with a desired accuracy. We find that our lower bound is almost tight, identifying a quantity -- related to the energy change caused by the channel to implement -- as a fundamental quantifier characterizing the coherence cost for the approximate implementation of Gibbs-preserving operations.
The Gibbs state is widely taken to be the equilibrium state of a system in contact with an environment at temperature $T$. However, non-negligible interactions between system and environment can give rise to an altered state. Here we derive general expressions for this mean force Gibbs state, valid for any system that interacts with a bosonic reservoir. First, we derive the state in the weak coupling limit and find that, in general, it maintains coherences with respect to the bare system Hamiltonian. Second, we develop a new expansion method suited to investigate the ultrastrong coupling regim…
Thermal operations are an operational model of non-equilibrium quantum thermodynamics. In the absence of coherence between energy levels, exact state transition conditions under thermal operations are known in terms of a mathematical relation called thermo-majorization. But incorporating coherence has turned out to be challenging, even under the relatively tractable model wherein all Gibbs state-preserving quantum channels are included. Here we find a mathematical generalization of thermal operations at low temperatures, "cooling maps", for which we derive the necessary and sufficient state tr…
We discuss dynamics of periodically-driven open quantum systems. The time evolution of the quantum state is described by the quantum master equation and the form of the dissipator is chosen so that the instantaneous stationary state is given by the Gibbs distribution. We find that the correlation between the population part and the coherence part of the density operator is induced by an adiabatic gauge potential. Although the introduction of the counterdiabatic term eliminates the correlation, additional correlations prevent a convergence to the Gibbs distribution. We study the performance of …
Quantum coherence, like entanglement, is a fundamental resource in quantum information. In recent years, remarkable progress has been made in formulating resource theory of coherence from a broader perspective. The notions of block-coherence and POVM-based coherence have been established. Certain challenges, however, remain to be addressed. It is difficult to define incoherent operations directly, without requiring incoherent states, which proves a major obstacle in establishing the resource theory of dynamical coherence. In this paper, we overcome this limitation by introducing an alternate d…
Quantum coherence is an essential feature of quantum mechanics which is responsible for the departure between classical and quantum world. The recently established resource theory of quantum coherence studies possible quantum technological applications of quantum coherence, and limitations which arise if one is lacking the ability to establish superpositions. An important open problem in this context is a simple characterization for incoherent operations, constituted by all possible transformations allowed within the resource theory of coherence. In this work, we contribute to such a character…
Coherence and entanglement are fundamental properties of quantum systems, promising to power the near future quantum computers, sensors and simulators. Yet, their experimental detection is challenging, usually requiring full reconstruction of the system state. We show that one can extract quantitative bounds to the relative entropy of coherence and the coherent information, coherence and entanglement quantifiers respectively, by a limited number of purity measurements. The scheme is readily implementable with current technology to verify quantum computations in large scale registers, without c…
Quantum Gibbs state sampling algorithms generally suffer from either scaling exponentially with system size or requiring specific knowledge of spectral properties \textit{a priori}. Also, these algorithms require a large overhead of bath or scratch/ancilla qubits. We propose a method, termed the minimal effective Gibbs ansatz (MEGA), which uses a quantum computer to determine a minimal ensemble of pure states that accurately reproduce thermal averages of typical observables. This technique employs properties of correlation functions that can be split into a lesser and greater part; here, we pr…
Thermal expectation estimation via single-trajectory Gibbs sampling with non-destructive measurements
Stanford University（斯坦福大学）；University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学）；Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering, Stanford University（斯坦福大学计算与数学工程研究所）
In this paper, we introduce a "coherence equality" that is satisfied by any classical communication -- i.e., conveyed by a localized carrier traveling along well defined directions. In contrast, this equality is violated when the carrier is prepared in a quantum superposition of communication directions. This is phrased in terms of the success probability of a certain communication task, which results to be always constant and equal to 1/2 in the classical case. On the other hand, we develop two simple quantum schemes that deviate systematically from the classical value, thus violating the coh…
Decoherence largely limits the physical realization of qubits and its mitigation is critical to quantum science. Here, we construct a robust qubit embedded in a decoherence-protected subspace, obtained by hybridizing an applied microwave drive with the ground-state electron spin of a silicon carbide divacancy defect. The qubit is protected from magnetic, electric, and temperature fluctuations, which account for nearly all relevant decoherence channels in the solid state. This culminates in an increase of the qubit's inhomogeneous dephasing time by over four orders of magnitude (to > 22 millise…
One of the biggest challenges to implement quantum protocols and quantum information processing (QIP) is achieving long coherence times, usually requiring systems at ultra-low temperatures. The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond is a promising alternative to this problem. Due to its spin properties, easy manipulation, and the possibility of doing optical state initialization and readout, it quickly became one of the best solid-state spin systems for QIP at room temperature. Here, we present the characterization of the spin-coherence of an ensemble of NV centers in an engineered sample of …
Quantum technologies are built on the power of coherent superposition. Atomic coherence is typically generated from optical coherence, most often via Rabi oscillations. However, canonical coherent states of light create imperfect resources; a fully-quantized description of "$\tfracπ{2}$ pulses" shows that the atomic superpositions generated remain entangled with the light. We show that there are quantum states of light that generate coherent atomic states perfectly, with no residual atom-field entanglement. These states can be found for arbitrarily short times and approach slightly-number-sque…
Overcoming the Quasi-Static Bottleneck: A Finite-Time Quantum Otto Information Engine Achieving Near-Unity Efficiency
College of Physics, Jilin University（吉林大学物理学院）；Department of Chemistry and Department of Physics and Astronomy, State University of New York at Stony Brook（纽约州立大学石溪分校化学系和物理与天文学系）
Rydberg atoms excited by cold blackbody radiation are shown to display long-lived quantum coherences on timescales of tens of picoseconds. By solving non-Markovian equations of motion with no free parameters we obtain the time evolution of the density matrix, and demonstrate that the blackbody-induced temporal coherences manifest as slowly decaying (100 ps) quantum beats in time-resolved fluorescence. An analytic model shows the dependence of the coherent dynamics on the energy splitting between atomic eigenstates, transition dipole moments, and coherence time of the radiation. Experimental de…
The Janus State: A Universal Lower Bound for Second-Order Coherence
The Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University（德克萨斯农工大学量子科学与工程研究所）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University（德克萨斯农工大学物理与天文学系）
Starting from a microscopic system-baths description, we derive the general conditions for a time-local quantum master equation (QME) to satisfy the first and second law of thermodynamics at the fluctuating level. Using counting statistics, we show that the fluctuating second law can be rephrased as a Generalized Quantum Detailed Balance condition (GQDB), i.e., a symmetry of the time-local generators which ensures the validity of the fluctuation theorem. When requiring in addition a strict system-bath energy conservation, the GQDB reduces to the usual notion of detailed balance which ensures Q…
Quantum states and measurements exhibit wave-like --- continuous, or particle-like --- discrete, character. Hybrid discrete-continuous photonic systems are key to investigating fundamental quantum phenomena, generating superpositions of macroscopic states, and form essential resources for quantum-enhanced applications, e.g. entanglement distillation and quantum computation, as well as highly efficient optical telecommunications. Realizing the full potential of these hybrid systems requires quantum-optical measurements sensitive to complementary observables such as field quadrature amplitude an…
We propose a novel superconducting logical qubit architecture, called the Cold Echo Qubit (CEQ), which is capable of preserving quantum information for much longer timescales than any of its component parts. The CEQ operates fully autonomously, requiring no measurement or feedback, and is compatible with relatively strong interaction elements, allowing for fast, high fidelity logical gates between multiple CEQ's. Its quantum state is protected by a combination of strong interactions and microwave driving, which implements a form of many-body dynamical decoupling to suppress phase noise. Estima…
The superconducting fluxonium qubit has a great potential for high-fidelity quantum gates with its long coherence times and strong anharmonicity at the half flux quantum sweet spot. However, current implementations of two-qubit gates compromise fluxonium's coherence properties by requiring either a temporary population of the non-computational states or tuning the magnetic flux off the sweet spot. Here we realize a fast all-microwave cross-resonance gate between two capacitively-coupled fluxoniums with the qubit dynamics well confined to the computational space. We demonstrate a direct CNOT ga…
One of the main goals of any resource theory such as entanglement, quantum thermodynamics, quantum coherence, and asymmetry, is to find necessary and sufficient conditions (NSC) that determine whether one resource can be converted to another by the set of free operations. Here we find such NSC for a large class of quantum resource theories which we call affine resource theories (ART). ARTs include the resource theories of athermality, asymmetry, and coherence, but not entanglement. Remarkably, the NSC can be expressed as a family of inequalities between resource monotones (quantifiers) that ar…
Experimental challenges and prospects for quantum-enhanced energy conversion: Stationary Fano coherence in V-type qutrits interacting with polarized incoherent radiation
Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-INO)（意大利国家光学研究所）；European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy (LENS), Università degli Studi di Firenze（佛罗伦萨大学非线性光谱学欧洲实验室）；Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Firenze（佛罗伦萨大学物理与天文学系）；Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-ISC)（意大利复杂系统研究所）
Geometric Response in Open Quantum Systems: Coherence, Curvature, and Susceptibility
University of Houston（休斯顿大学）；Université de Montréal（蒙特利尔大学）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV)（国立理工大学高级研究中心）
