Echo dynamics and fidelity are often used to discuss stability in quantum information processing and quantum chaos. Yet fidelity yields no information about entanglement, the characteristic property of quantum mechanics. We study the evolution of entanglement in echo dynamics. We find qualitatively different behavior between integrable and chaotic systems on one hand and between random and coherent initial states for integrable systems on the other. For the latter the evolution of entanglement is given by a classical time scale. Analytic results are illustrated numerically in a Jaynes Cummings model.
We study the stability of entanglement in a quantum computer implementing an efficient quantum algorithm, which simulates a quantum chaotic dynamics. For this purpose, we perform a forward-backward evolution of an initial state in which two qubits are in a maximally entangled Bell state. If the dynamics is reversed after an evolution time $t_r$, there is an echo of the entanglement between these two qubits at time $t_e=2t_r$. Perturbations attenuate the pairwise entanglement echo and generate entanglement between these two qubits and the other qubits of the quantum computer.
We study numerically the properties of entanglement of two interacting, or noninteracting, particles evolving in a regime of quantum chaos in the quantum Chirikov standard map. Such pairs can be viewed as interacting, on noninteracting, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs in a regime of quantum chaos. The analysis is done with such tools as the Loschmidt echo of entanglement and the Poincaré recurrences of entanglement in presence of absorption. The obtained results show unusual features of the entropy of entanglement and the spectrum of Schmidt decomposition with their dependence on interactions at…
We analyze the relationship between qubit-environment entanglement that can be created during the pure dephasing of the qubit and the effectiveness of the spin echo protocol. We focus here on mixed states of the environment. We show that while the echo protocol can obviously counteract classical environmental noise, it can also undo dephasing associated with qubit-environment entanglement, and there is no obvious difference in its efficiency in these two cases. Additionally, we show that qubit-environment entanglement can be generated at the end of the echo protocol even when it is absent at t…
We analyze local spin-echo procedures to protect entanglement between two non-interacting qubits, each subject to pure-dephasing random telegraph noise. For superconducting qubits this simple model captures characteristic features of the effect of bistable impurities coupled to the device. An analytic expression for the entanglement dynamics is reported. Peculiar features related to the non-Gaussian nature of the noise already observed in the single qubit dynamics also occur in the entanglement dynamics for proper values of the ratio $g=v/γ$, between the qubit-impurity coupling strength and th…
We formulate dynamical phase transitions in subsystems embedded in larger quantum systems. Introducing the entanglement echo as an overlap of the initial and instantaneous entanglement ground states, we show its analytic structure after a quench provides natural definition of dynamical phase transitions in the subsystem. These transitions come in two varieties, the entanglement-type transitions and the bulk-type Loschmidt transitions. The entanglement-type transitions arise from periodic reorganization of quantum correlations between the subsystem and its environment, manifesting in instantane…
We study the effect of two simultaneous local quenches on the evolution of Loschmidt echo and entanglement entropy of a one dimensional transverse Ising model. In this work, one of the local quenches involves the connection of two spin-1/2 chains at a certain time and the other local quench corresponds to a sudden change in the magnitude of the transverse field at a given site in one of the spin chains. We numerically calculate the dynamics associated with the Loschmidt echo and the entanglement entropy as a result of such double quenches, and discuss various timescales involved in this proble…
Methods for achieving quantum control and detection of individual nuclear spins by single electrons of solid-state defects play a central role for quantum information processing and nano-scale nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). However, with standard techniques, no more than 8 nuclear spins have been resolved. Here we develop a method that improves significantly the ability to spectrally resolve nuclear spins and demonstrate its capabilities with detailed numerical simulations by using a nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre as model system. Based on delayed entanglement control, a technique combining m…
We propose a versatile Loschmidt echo protocol to detect and quantify multiparticle entanglement. It allows us to extract the quantum Fisher information for arbitrary pure states, and finds direct application in quantum metrology. In particular, the protocol applies to states that are generally difficult to characterize, as non-Gaussian states, and states that are not symmetric under particle exchange. We focus on atomic systems, including trapped ions, polar molecules, and Rydberg atoms, where entanglement is generated dynamically via long-range interaction, and show that the protocol is stab…
Coined discrete-time quantum walks are studied using simple deterministic dynamical systems as coins whose classical limit can range from being integrable to chaotic. It is shown that a Loschmidt echo like fidelity plays a central role and when the coin is chaotic this is approximately the characteristic function of a classical random walker. Thus the classical binomial distribution arises as a limit of the quantum walk and the walker exhibits diffusive growth before eventually becoming ballistic. The coin-walker entanglement growth is shown to be logarithmic in time as in the case of many-bod…
Here we demonstrate generating and storing entanglement in a solid state spin-wave quantum memory with on-demand read out using the process of rephased amplified spontaneous emission (RASE). Amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), resulting from an inverted ensemble of Pr$^{3+}$ ions doped into a Y$_2$SiO$_5$ crystal, generates entanglement between collective states of the praseodymium ensemble and the output light. The ensemble is then rephased using a four-level photon echo technique. Entanglement between the ASE and its echo is confirmed and the inseparability violation preserved when the RAS…
The Loschmidt echo measures the sensitivity to perturbations of quantum evolutions. We study its short time decay in classically chaotic systems. Using perturbation theory and throwing out all correlation imposed by the initial state and the perturbation, we show that the characteristic time of this regime is well described by the inverse of the width of the local density of states. This result is illustrated and discussed in a numerical study in a 2-dimensional chaotic billiard system perturbed by various contour deformations and using different types of initial conditions. Moreover, the infl…
Entanglement between a quantum system and its environment leads to loss of coherence in the former. In general, the temporal fate of coherences is complicated. Here, we establish the connection between decoherence of a central system and fidelity decay in the environment for a variety of situations, including both, energy conserving and dissipative couplings. We show how properties of unitary time evolution of the environment can be inferred from the non-unitary evolution of coherences in the central system. This opens up promising ways for measuring Loschmidt echoes in a variety of situations…
The Loschmidt echo and the purity are two quantities that can provide invaluable information about the evolution of a quantum system. While the Loschmidt echo characterizes instability and sensitivity to perturbations, purity measures the loss of coherence produced by an environment coupled to the system. For classically chaotic systems both quantities display a number of -- supposedly universal -- regimes that can lead on to think of them as equivalent quantities. We study the decay of the Loschmidt echo and the purity for systems with finite dimensional Hilbert space and present numerical ev…
We study the possibility to undo the quantum mechanical evolution in a time reversal experiment. The naive expectation, as reflected in the common terminology ("Loschmidt echo"), is that maximum compensation results if the reversed dynamics extends to the same time as the forward evolution. We challenge this belief, and demonstrate that the time $t_r$ for maximum return probability is in general shorter. We find that $t_r$ depends on $lambda = eps_evol/eps_prep$, being the ratio of the error in setting the parameters (fields) for the time reversed evolution to the perturbation which is involve…
Quantum storage of light in a collective ensemble of atoms plays an important role in quantum information processing. Consisting of a quantum repeater together with quantum entanglement swapping, quantum memory has been intensively studied recently. Conventional photon echoes have been limited by extremely low retrieval efficiency and short storage time confined by the optical phase decay process. Here, we report a storage time-extended near perfect photon echo protocol using a phase locking method via an auxiliary spin state, where the phase locking acts as a conditional stopper of the rephas…
We investigate the sensitivity of the time evolution of semiclassical wave packets in two-dimensional chaotic billiards with respect to local perturbations of their boundaries. For this purpose, we address, analytically and numerically, the time decay of the Loschmidt echo (LE). We find the LE to decay exponentially in time, with the rate equal to the classical escape rate from an open billiard obtained from the original one by removing the perturbation-affected region of its boundary. Finally, we propose a principal scheme for the experimental observation of the LE decay.
We investigate decoherence in quantum systems coupled via dephasing-type interactions to an arbitrary environment with chaotic underlying classical dynamics. The coherences of the reduced state of the central system written in the preferential energy eigenbasis are quantum Loschmidt echoes, which in the strong coupling regime are characterized at long times scales by fluctuations around a constant mean value. We show that due to the chaotic dynamics of the environment, the mean value and the width of the Loschmidt echo fluctuations are inversely proportional to the quantity we define as the ef…
Quantum entanglement can provide enhanced precision beyond standard quantum limit (SQL), the highest precision achievable with classical means. It remains challenging, however, to observe large enhancement limited by the experimental abilities to prepare, maintain, manipulate and detect entanglement. Here, we present nonlinear interferometry protocols based on echoing spin-nematic squeezing to achieve record high enhancement factors in atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The echo is realized by a state-flip of the spin-nematic squeezed vacuum, which serves as the probe state and is refocused back…
The Loschmidt echo is a measure of the stability and reversibility of quantum evolution under perturbations of the Hamiltonian. One of the expected and most relevant characteristics of this quantity for chaotic systems is an exponential decay with a perturbation independent decay rate given by the classical Lyapunov exponent. However, a non-uniform decay -- instead of the Lyapunov regime -- has been reported in several systems. In this work we find an analytical semiclassical expression for the averaged fidelity amplitude that can be related directly to the anomalous -- unexpected-- behaviour …
Entanglement-enhanced atom interferometry has the potential of surpassing the standard quantum limit and eventually reaching the ultimate Heisenberg bound. The experimental progress is, however, hindered by various technical noise sources, including the noise in the detection of the output quantum state. The influence of detection noise can be largely overcome by exploiting echo schemes, where the entanglement-generating interaction is repeated after the interferometer sequence. Here, we propose an echo protocol that uses two-axis counter-twisting as the main nonlinear interaction. We demonstr…
Maximal Entanglement and Frozen Information: A Unified Framework for Dynamical Quantum Phase Transitions
College of Physics Science and Technology, Yangzhou University（扬州大学物理科学与技术学院）；School of Physics, Hangzhou Normal University（杭州师范大学物理学院）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所）
We report dynamical quantum phase transition portrait in the alternating field transverse XY spin chain with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction by investigating singularities in the Loschmidt echo and the corresponding rate function after a sudden quench of system parameters. Unlike the Ising model, the analysis of Loschmidt echo yields non-uniformly spaced transition times in this model. Comparative study between the equilibrium and the dynamical quantum phase transitions in this case reveals that there are quenches where one occurs without the other, and the regimes where they co-exist. Howev…
One often needs to estimate how fast an evolving state of a quantum system can depart from some target state or target subspace of a Hilbert space. Such estimates are known as quantum speed limits. We derive a quantum speed limit for a general time-dependent target subspace. When the target subspace is an instantaneous invariant subspace of a time-dependent Hamiltonian, the obtained quantum speed limit bounds the adiabatic fidelity, which is a figure of merit of quantum adiabaticity. We also compare two states evolving under two different Hamiltonians and derive a bound on the Loschmidt echo.
We consider the degradation of the dynamics of a Gaussian wave packet in a harmonic oscillator under the presence of an environment. This last is given by a single non-degenerate two level system. We analyze how the binary degree of freedom perturbs the free evolution of the wave packet producing decoherence, which is quantified by the Loschmidt Echo. This magnitude measures the reversibility of a perturbed quantum evolution. In particular, we use it here to study the relative "fragility" of coherent superpositions (cat states) with respect to incoherent ones. This fragility or sensitivity tur…
We obtain an initial value representation for the quantum Loschmidt echo from the semiclassical theory of Wigner function evolution, together with classical first-order perturbation theory. In the limit of small actions, the amplitude of each trajectory reduces to unity, just as in the dephasing representation introduced by Vanicek, but these trajectories are here generated by the mean Hamiltonian for both the forward and the backward motion. This slight change of action may substantially alter the phase. The amplitude correction depends on the second derivative of the action. This improved de…
Adiabaticity of quantum evolution is important in many settings. One example is the adiabatic quantum computation. Nevertheless, up to now, there is no effective method to test the adiabaticity of the evolution when the eigenenergies of the driven Hamiltonian are not known. We propose a simple method to check adiabaticity of a quantum process for an arbitrary quantum system. We further propose a operational method for finding a uniformly adiabatic quench scheme based on Kibble-Zurek mechanism for the case when the initial and the final Hamiltonians are given. This method should help in impleme…
Evolution of quantum fidelity for two-level systems is studied in the context of periodic echo. From a general treatment for time independent case, we obtain a simple condition on the governing Hamiltonians under which the systems display periodic quantum echo. For a specific time dependent problem the quantum fidelity is shown to exhibit Rabi oscillation. This may be considered as a simple mechanism to generate periodic echo, except for a specific initial superpositional state in which case the fidelity remains invariant.
Quantum states extended over a large volume in phase space have oscillations from quantum interferences in their Wigner distribution on scales smaller than $\hbar$ [W.H. Zurek, Nature {\bf 412}, 712 (2001)]. We investigate the influence of those sub-Planck scale structures on the sensitivity to an external perturbation of the state's time evolution. While we do find an accelerated decay of the Loschmidt Echo for an extended state in comparison to a localized wavepacket, the acceleration is described entirely by the classical Lyapunov exponent and hence cannot originate from quantum interferenc…
A quantum Loschmidt echo (also referred to as quantum time mirror) corresponds to an effective time inversion after which the quantum wave function reverses its previous time evolution and eventually reaches its initial distribution again. We propose a comparably simple protocol for such an effective time reversal for ultra-cold atoms in optical lattices which should be easier to realize experimentally than previous proposals.
Spin echo can be used to refocus random dynamical phases caused by inhomogeneities in control fields and thereby retain the purity of a spatial distribution of quantum spins. This technique for accurate spin control is an essential ingredient in many applications, such as nuclear magnetic resonance, magnetic resonance imaging, and quantum information processing. Here, we show how all the elements of a spin echo sequence can be performed at high speed by means of transitionsless quantum driving. This technique promises accurate control of rapid quantum spin evolution. We apply the scheme to uni…
We study operator entanglement of the quantum chaotic evolutions. This study shows that properties of the operator entanglement production are qualitatively similar to the properties reported in literature about the pure state entanglement production. This similarity establishes that the operator entanglement quantifies {\it intrinsic} entangling power of an operator. The term `intrinsic' suggests that this measure is independent of any specific choice of initial states.
Coherence evolution and echo effect of an electron spin, which is coupled inhomogeneously to an interacting one-dimensional finite spin bath via hyperfine-type interaction, is studied using the adaptive time dependent density matrix renormalization group (t-DMRG) method. It is found that the interplay of the coupling inhomogeneity and the transverse intra-bath interactions results in two qualitatively different coherence evolutions, namely, a coherence preserving evolution characterized by periodic oscillation and a complete decoherence evolution. Correspondingly, the echo effects induced by a…
In this paper we study how to preserve entanglement and nonlocality under dephasing produced by classical noise with large low-frequency components, as $1/f$ noise, by Dynamical Decoupling techniques. We first show that quantifiers of entanglement and nonlocality satisfy a closed relation valid for two independent qubits locally coupled to a generic environment under pure dephasing and starting from a general class of initial states. This result allows to assess the efficiency of pulse-based dynamical decoupling for protecting nonlocal quantum correlations between two qubits subject to pure-de…
A new protocol of the optical quantum memory based on the resonant interactions of the multi atomic system with a cavity light mode is proposed. The quantum memory is realized using a controllable inversion of the inhomogeneous broadening of the resonant atomic transition and impact interaction (on request) of additional short 2 - laser pulse resonant to an adjacent atomic transition. We demonstrate that the quantum memory protocol is effective for arbitrary storage time and can be used for new quantum manipulations with transient entangled states in the field-atoms evolution. The effect of th…
Quantum unitary evolution typically leads to thermalization of generic interacting many-body systems. There are very few known general methods for reversing this process, and we focus on the magic echo, a radio-frequency pulse sequence known to approximately "rewind" the time evolution of dipolar coupled homonuclear spin systems in a large magnetic field. By combining analytic, numerical, and experimental results we systematically investigate factors leading to the degradation of magic echoes, as observed in reduced revival of mean transverse magnetization. Going beyond the conventional analys…
Echo protocols provide a means to investigate the arrow of time in macroscopic processes. Starting from a nonequilibrium state, the many-body quantum system under study is evolved for a certain period of time $τ$. Thereafter, an (effective) time reversal is performed that would -- if implemented perfectly -- take the system back to the initial state after another time period $τ$. Typical examples are nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and polarization echo experiments. The presence of small, uncontrolled inaccuracies during the backward propagation results in deviations of the "echo signal" fr…
Entanglement or entanglement generating interactions permit to achieve the maximum allowed speed in the dynamical evolution of a composite system, when the energy resources are distributed among subsystems. The cases of pre-existing entanglement and of entanglement-building interactions are separately addressed. The role of classical correlations is also discussed.
We analyze the entanglement distribution and the two-qubit residual entanglement in multipartite systems. For a composite system consisting of two cavities interacting with independent reservoirs, it is revealed that the entanglement evolution is restricted by an entanglement monogamy relation derived here. Moreover, it is found that the initial cavity-cavity entanglement evolves completely to the genuine four-partite cavities-reservoirs entanglement in the time interval between the sudden death of cavity-cavity entanglement and the birth of reservoir-reservoir entanglement. In addition, we al…
We determine the entanglement capability of self-inverse Hamiltonian evolution, which reduces to the known result for Ising Hamiltonian, and identify optimal input states for yielding the maximal entanglement rate. We introduce the concept of the operator entanglement rate, and find that the maximal operator entanglement rate gives a lower bound on the entanglement capability of a general Hamiltonian.
We analyze the entanglement evolution of two cavity photons being affected by the dissipation of two individual reservoirs. Under an arbitrary local unitary operation on the initial state, it is shown that there is only one parameter which changes the entanglement dynamics. For the bipartite subsystems, we show that the entanglement of the cavity photons is correlated with that of the reservoirs, although the local operation can delay the time at which the photon entanglement disappears and advance the time at which the reservoir entanglement appears. Furthermore, via a new defined four-qubit …
Non-Hermitian classical and open quantum systems near an exceptional point (EP) are known to undergo strong deviations in their dynamical behavior under small perturbations or slow cycling of parameters as compared to Hermitian systems. Such a strong sensitivity is at the heart of many interesting phenomena and applications, such as the asymmetric breakdown of the adiabatic theorem, enhanced sensing, non-Hermitian dynamical quantum phase transitions and photonic catastrophe. Like for Hermitian systems, the sensitivity to perturbations on the dynamical evolution can be captured by Loschmidt ech…
Long-lived quantum memories are essential components of a long-standing goal of remote distribution of entanglement in quantum networks. These can be realized by storing the quantum states of light as single-spin excitations in atomic ensembles. However, spin states are often subjected to different dephasing processes that limit the storage time, which in principle could be overcome using spin-echo techniques. Theoretical studies have suggested this to be challenging due to unavoidable spontaneous emission noise in ensemble-based quantum memories. Here we demonstrate spin-echo manipulation of …
We investigate the time evolution of the entanglement of assistance when one subsystem undergoes the action of local noisy channels. A general factorization law is presented for the evolution equation of entanglement of assistance. Our results demonstrate that the dynamics of the entanglement of assistance is determined by the action of a noisy channel on the pure maximally entangled state, in which the entanglement reduction turns out to be universal for all quantum states entering the channel. This single quantity will make it easy to characterize the entanglement dynamics of entanglement of…
We unveil the role of the long time average of Loschmidt echo in the characterization of nonequilibrium quantum phase transitions by studying sudden quench processes across quantum phase transitions in various quantum systems. While the dynamical quantum phase transitions are characterized by the emergence of a series of zero points at critical times during time evolution, we demonstrate that nonequilibrium quantum phase transitions can be identified by nonanalyticities in the long time average of Loschmidt echo. The nonanalytic behaviours are illustrated by a sharp change in the long time ave…
The notion of entanglement can be naturally extended from quantum-states to the level of general quantum evolutions. This is achieved by considering multi-partite unitary transformations as elements of a multi-partite Hilbert space and then extended to general quantum operations. We show some connection between this entanglement and the entangling capabilities of the quantum evolution.
Symmetries of the initial state of a quantum system and the quantum channels, which simultaneously affect parts of the system, can significantly simplify the description of the entanglement evolution. Using concurrence as the entanglement measure, we study the entanglement evolution of few qubit systems, when each of the qubits is affected by a local channel independently of the others. We show that, for low-rank density matrices of the final quantum state, such complex entanglement dynamics can be completely described by a combination of independent factors representing the evolution of entan…
We investigate the average bipartite entanglement, over all possible divisions of a multipartite system, as a useful measure of multipartite entanglement. We expose a connection between such measures and quantum-error-correcting codes by deriving a formula relating the weight distribution of the code to the average entanglement of encoded states. Multipartite entangling power of quantum evolutions is also investigated.
A complete analysis on the generation of spin entanglement from NRQED is presented. The results of entanglement are obtained with relativistic correction to the leading order of (v/c)^2. It is shown that to this order the degree of entanglement of a singlet state does not change under time evolution whereas the triplet state can change.
Evolution of entanglement with the proceeding of quantum algorithms affects the outcome of the algorithm. Particularly, the performance of Grover's search algorithm gets worsened if the initial state of the algorithm is an entangled one. The success probability of search can be seen as an operational measure of entanglement. This paper demonstrates an entanglement measure based on the performance of Grover's search algorithm for three and five qubit systems. We also show that although the overall pattern shows growth of entanglement, its rise to a maximum and then consequent decay, the presenc…
We discuss entanglement evolution of a multi-qubit system when one of its qubits is subjected to a general noisy channel. For such a system, an evolution equation of entanglement for a lower bound for multi-qubit concurrence is derived. Using this evolution equation, the entanglement dynamics of an initially mixed three-qubit state composed of a GHZ and a W state is analyzed if one of the qubits is affected by a phase, an amplitude or a generalized amplitude damping channel.
