5 pages (llncs.sty, Springer style file), 1 EPS figure. The paper will appear in "Computer Simulation Studies in Condensed-Matter Physics XVI", eds. D.P. Landau et al., Springer Proceedings in Physics (Springer, Berlin, 2004)
Computer simulations of decoherence in quantum spin systems require the solution of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation for interacting quantum spin systems over extended periods of time. We use exact diagonalization, Chebyshev polynomial technique, four Suzuki-formula algorithms, and the short-iterative-Lanczos method to solve a simple model for decoherence of a quantum spin system by an environment consisting of quantum spins, and compare advantages and limitations of different algorithms.
We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a spin-bath environment. It is shown that the connectivity and the coupling strength between the spins in the environment are of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. Changing the connectivity or coupling strenghts changes the decoherence of the central system from Gaussian to exponential decay law.
We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a spin-bath environment. It is shown that the connectivity and the coupling strength between the spins in the environment are of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. For the anisotropic spin-bath, changing the connectivity or coupling strenghts changes the decoherence of the central system from Gaussian to exponential decay law. The initial state of the environment is shown to affect the decoherence process in a qualitatively significant manner.
A low temperature model system consisting of a central spin coupled to a spin-bath is studied to determine whether interaction among bath spins has an effect on central spin dynamics. In the absence of intra-environmental coupling, decoherence of the central spin is fast and irreversible. Strong intra-environmental interaction results in an effective decoupling of the central spin from the bath and suppression of decoherence. Weaker intra-environmental coupling reduces but does not eliminate decoherence. We believe that similar behaviour will be observed in any system with a self-interacting e…
The works on decoherence due to spin baths usually agree in studying a one-spin system in interaction with a large spin bath. In this paper we generalize those models by analyzing a many-spin system and by studying decoherence or its suppression in function of the relation between the numbers of spins of the system and the bath. This model may help to identify clusters of particles unaffected by decoherence, which, as a consequence, can be used to store quantum information.
We compare disentanglement and decoherence rates within two-spin and three-spin entangled systems subjected to all possible combinations of local and collective pure dephasing noise combinations. In all cases, the bipartite entanglement decay rate is found to be greater than or equal to the dephasing-decoherence rates and often significantly greater. This sharpens previous results for two-spin systems [T. Yu and J. H. Eberly Phys. Rev. B 68, 165322 (2003)] and extends them to the three-spin context.
An open ended spin chain can serves as a quantum data bus for the coherent transfer of quantum state information. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency of such quantum spin channels which work in a decoherence environment. Our results show that, the decoherence will significantly reduce the fidelity of quantum communication through the spin channels. Generally speaking, as the distance increases, the decoherence effects become more serious, which will put some constraints on the spin chains for long distance quantum state transfer.
By analytically solving the master equation, we investigate quantum state transfer, creation and distribution of entanglement in the model of Milburn's intrinsic decoherence. Our results reveal that the ideal spin channels will be destroyed by the intrinsic decoherence environment, and the detrimental effects become severe as the decoherence rate $γ$ and the spin chain length $N$ increase. For infinite evolution time, both the state transfer fidelity and the concurrence of the created and distributed entanglement approach steady state values, which are independent of the decoherence rate $γ$ a…
We demonstrate that the spin decoherence of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond can be suppressed by a transverse magnetic field if the electron spin bath is the primary decoherence source. The NV spin coherence, created in "a decoherence-free subspace" is protected by the transverse component of the zero-field splitting, increasing the spin-coherence time about twofold. The decoherence due to the electron spin bath is also suppressed at magnetic fields stronger than ~25 gauss when applied parallel to the NV symmetry axis. Our method can be used to extend the spin-coherence time of simila…
We analyze decoherence and objectivization processes in spin-spin models for arbitrary spins. We first derive the most general analytic form of the decoherence factor in the measurement limit, where the interaction Hamiltonian dominates the rest. We then analyze thermal environments and derive exact, analytic formulas for both the decoherence factor and the state fidelity of post-interaction environment states. This allows to analyze the objectivization process of the state of the central spin during the interaction. We do so using, so called, Spectrum Broadcast Structures (SBS), which are spe…
We reckon the behaviour of spin squeezing in tripartite unsqueezed maximally entangled Green- berger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and W states under various decoherence channels with Kitagawa- Ueda (KU) criteria. In order to search spin squeezing sudden death (SSSD) and signatures of spin squeezing production we use bit flip, phase flip, bit-phase-flip, amplitude damping, phase damping and depolarization channels in the present study. In literature, the influence of decoherence has been studied as a destroying element. On the contrary here we investigate the positive aspect of decoherence, which prod…
Quantum decoherence happens when the system interacts with the environment. Quantum correlation behaviours in the two-qubit spin squeezing model are studied under the influence of intrinsic decoherence. Quantitative results were determined, which depend on parameters of the physical system by checking different quantifiers of quantum correlation such as entanglement, local quantum uncertainty, trace distance discord and uncertainty-induced quantum nonlocality. We show that the entanglement suffers from intrinsic decoherence and exhibits sudden death, whereas the other measures are more robust …
We study a model of a quantum spin register interacting with an environment of spin particles in quantum-measurement limit. In the limit of collective decoherence we obtain the form of state vectors that constitute high-dimensional decoherence-free subspaces (DFS). In a more general setting we present sufficient and necessary conditions for existence of low-dimensional DFSs that can be used to construct subspaces of higher dimension.
In this paper we propose a closed-system perspective to study decoherence. From this perspective we analyze the spin-bath model as presented in the literature, and a natural generalization of that model. On the basis of the results obtained from that analysis, we argue that decoherence may be understood as a phenomenon relative to the partition of a closed system, selected in each particular case. This viewpoint frees the decoherence program from certain conceptual difficulties derived from its open-system perspective. We also argue that the usual picture of decoherence in terms of energy diss…
In the present paper, we study spin squeezing under decoherence in the superposition of tripartite maximally entangled GHZ and W states. Here we use amplitude damping, phase damping and depolarisation channel. We have investigated the dynamics of spin squeezing with the interplay of superposition and decoherence parameters with different directions of the mean spin vector. We have found the mixture of GHZ and W states is robust against spin squeezing generation for amplitude damping and phase damping channels for certain directions of the mean spin vector. However, the depolarisation channel p…
The information in quantum computers is often stored in identical two-level systems (spins or pseudo-spins) that are separated by a distance shorter than the characteristic wavelength of a reservoir which is responsible for decoherence. In such a case, the collective spin-reservoir interaction, rather than an individual spin-reservoir interaction, may determine the decoherence characteristics. We use computational basis states, symmetrized spin states and spin coherent states to study collective decoherence in the implementation of various quantum algorithms. A simple method of implementing qu…
We study the decoherence process induced by a spin chain environment on a central spin consisting of R spins and we apply it on the dynamics of quantum correlations (QCs) of three interacting qubits. In order to see the impact of the initial prepared state of the spin chain environment on the decoherence process, we assume the spin chain environment prepared in two main ways, namely, either the ground state or the vacuum state in the momentum space. We develop a general heuristic analysis when the spin chain environment in prepared in these states, in order to understand the decoherence proces…
We analyze a microscopic decoherence model in which the total system is described as a spin gas. A spin gas consists of N classically moving particles with additional, interacting quantum degrees of freedom (e.g. spins). For various multipartite entangled probe states, we analyze the decoherence induced by interactions between the probe- and environmental spins in such spin gases. We can treat mesoscopic environments (10^5 particles). We present results for a lattice gas, which could be realized by neutral atoms hopping in an optical lattice, and show the effects of non-Markovian and correlate…
This Letter studies the decoherence in a system of two antiferromagnetically coupled spins that interact with a spin bath environment. Systems are considered that range from the rotationally invariant to highly anisotropic spin models, have different topologies and values of parameters that are fixed or are allowed to fluctuate randomly. We explore the conditions under which the two-spin system clearly shows an evolution from the initial spin-up - spin-down state towards the maximally entangled singlet state. We demonstrate that frustration and, especially, glassiness of the spin environment s…
We propose an efficient method to protect spin squeezing under the action of amplitude-damping, depolarizing and phase-damping channels based on measurement reversal from weak measurement, and consider an ensemble of N independent spin-1/2 particles with exchange symmetry. We find that spin squeezing can be enhanced greatly under three different decoherence channels and spin-squeezing sudden death (SSSD) can be avoided undergoing amplitude damping and phase-damping channels.
This study deals with the further development of nuclear spin model of scalable quantum register, which presents the one-dimensional chain of the magnetic atoms with nuclear spins 1/2, substituting the basic atoms in the plate of nuclear spin-free easy-axis 3D antiferromagnet. The decoherence rates of one qubit state and entanglement state of two removed qubits and longitudinal relaxation rates are caused by the interaction of nuclear spins-qubits with virtual spin waves in antiferromagnet ground state were calculated. It was considered also one qubit adiabatic decoherence, is caused by the in…
We analyze the quantum entanglement at the equilibrium in a class of exactly solvable one-dimensional spin models at finite temperatures and identify a region where the quantum fluctuations determine the behavior of the system. We probe the response of the system in this region by studying the spin dynamics after projective measurement of one local spin which leads to the appearance of the ``decoherence wave''. We investigate time-dependent spin correlation functions, the entanglement dynamics, and the fidelity of the quantum information transfer after the measurement.
In addition to being a very interesting quantum phenomenon, Schrödinger cat swapping has the potential for application in the preparation of quantum states that could be used in metrology and other quantum processing. We study in detail the effects of field decoherence on a cat-swapping system comprising a set of identical qubits, or spins, all coupled to a field mode. We demonstrate that increasing the number of spins actually mitigates the effects of field decoherence on the collapse and revival of a spin Schrödinger cat, which could be of significant utility in quantum metrology and other q…
We experimentally demonstrate room-temperature storage of quantum entanglement using two nuclear spins weakly coupled to the electronic spin carried by a single nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. We realize universal quantum gate control over the three-qubit spin system and produce entangled states encoded within the decoherence-free subspace of the two nuclear spins. By injecting arbitrary collective noise, we demonstrate that the decoherence-free entangled state has coherence time longer than that of other entangled states by an order of magnitude in our experiment.
We consider the evolution of a two-state quantum system (a spin 1/2 particle) in both the framework of standard quantum mechanics and under the decoherence regime. The former approach on this issue is the well-known quantum flipping process of a dichotomic system subjected to a time-dependent magnetic field. In the latter approach, utilizing the Spin-Boson model to describe the interaction of system with its environment, we derive the Born-Markov master equation to obtain the decoherence time. It is possible to show that under some legitimate conditions, one may find a potential conflict betwe…
We examine the effects of intra-environmental coupling on decoherence by constructing a low temperature spin--spin-bath model of an atomic impurity in a Debye crystal. The impurity interacts with phonons of the crystal through anti-ferromagnetic spin-spin interactions. The reduced density matrix of the central spin representing the impurity is calculated by dynamically integrating the full Schroedinger equation for the spin--spin-bath model for different thermally weighted eigenstates of the spin-bath. Exact numerical results show that increasing the intra-environmental coupling results in sup…
The monogamous nature of entanglement has been illustrated by the derivation of entanglement sharing inequalities - bounds on the amount of entanglement that can be shared amongst the various parts of a multipartite system. Motivated by recent studies of decoherence, we demonstrate an interesting manifestation of this phenomena that arises in system-environment models where there exists interactions between the modes or subsystems of the environment. We investigate this phenomena in the spin-bath environment, constructing an entanglement sharing inequality bounding the entanglement between a c…
Based on the recent experiments on the hybrid quantum system of a superconducting microwave cavity coupling strongly to an inhomogeneous broadening spin ensemble under an external driving field, we use the exact master equation approach to investigate its non-Markovian decoherence dynamics. Here the spin ensemble is made by negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects in diamond. Our exact master equation theory for open systems depicts the experimental decoherence results and reveals the mechanism how the decoherence induced by the inhomogeneous broadening is suppressed in the strong-coup…
The study of the decoherence of qubits in spin systems is almost restricted to environments whose constituents are spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particles. In this paper we consider environments that are composed of particles of higher spin, and we investigate the consequences on the dynamics of a qubit coupled to such baths via Heisenberg $XY$ and Ising interactions. It is shown that while the short time decay in both cases gets faster as the magnitude of the spin increases, the asymptotic behavior exhibits an improvement of the suppression of the decoherence when the coupling is through Heisenberg $XY$…
Quantum spin networks form a generic system to describe a range of quantum devices for quantum information processing and sensing applications. Understanding how to control them is essential to achieve devices with practical functionalities. Energy landscape shaping is a novel control paradigm to achieve selective transfer of excitations in a spin network with surprisingly strong robustness towards uncertainties in the Hamiltonians. Here we study the effect of decoherence, specifically generic pure dephasing, on the robustness of these controllers. Results indicate that while the effectiveness…
In order to witness multipartite correlations beyond pairwise entanglement, spin-squeezing parameters are analytically calculated for a spin ensemble in a collective initial state under three different decoherence channels. It is shown that, in analogy to pairwise entanglement, the spin squeezing described by different parameters can suddenly become zero at different vanishing times. This finding shows the general occurrence of sudden vanishing phenomena of quantum correlations in many-body systems, which here is referred to as spin-squeezing sudden death (SSSD). It is shown that the SSSD usua…
We study the scaling of decoherence of decoupled electron spin qubits due to hyperfine interaction. For a superposed state consisting of product states from a single Zeeman manifold, both $T_2^*(n)$ and $T_2(n)$ are scale-free with respect to $n$ and the number of basis states, $m$. For a superposed state made up of states from different Zeeman manifolds, both $T_2(n)$ and $T_2^*(n)$ are roughly inversely proportional to $\sqrt{n}$. Our results can be extended to other decoherence mechanisms, including in the presence of dynamical decoupling, which allow meaningful discussions on the scalabili…
By considering distance-regular graphs as spin networks, we investigate the state transfer fidelity in this class of networks. The effect of environment on the dynamics of state transfer is modeled using Milburn's intrinsic decoherence [G. J. Milburn, Phys. Rev. A 44, 5401 (1991)]. We consider a particular type of spin Hamiltonians which are extended version of those of Christandl et al [Phys. Rev. A 71, 032312 (2005)]. It is shown that decoherence destroys perfect communication channels. Using optimal coupling strengths derived by Jafarizadeh and Sufiani [Phys. Rev. A 77, 022315 (2008)], we s…
We examine an exactly solvable model of decoherence - a spin-system interacting with a collection of environment spins. We show that in this model (introduced some time ago to illustrate environment-induced superselection) generic assumptions about the coupling strengths lead to a universal (Gaussian) suppression of coherence between pointer states. We explore the regimes of validity of these results and discuss their relation to the spectral features of the environment and to the Loschmidt echo (or fidelity). Finally, we comment on the observation of such time dependence in spin echo experime…
he thermal entanglement is generated by weakly interacting atoms with an isotropic spin-1 chain. The decoherence of the entanglement is mainly investigated. The effective Hamiltonian is analytically obtained by the approximation method of perturbation. The scaling behavior of the effective coupling is numerically illustrated by the exact diagonalization. It is found out that the decay of the entanglement is slow in the case of non interacting spins. The long-distance thermal entangled states can be used as the noisy channel for the achievement of the quantum teleportation.
We numerically investigate decoherence of a two-spin system (central system) by a bath of many spins 1/2. By carefully adjusting parameters, the dynamical regime of the bath has been varied from quantum chaos to regular, while all other dynamical characteristics have been kept practically intact. We explicitly demonstrate that for a many-body quantum bath, the onset of quantum chaos leads to significantly faster and stronger decoherence compared to an equivalent non-chaotic bath. Moreover, the non-diagonal elements of the system's density matrix decay differently for chaotic and non-chaotic ba…
An effective force induced by spatially depending decoherence is predicted. The phenomenon is illustrated by a simple model of a 1/2-spin particle subjected to distributed unselective measurement of noncommuting spin components.
We demonstrate that the Chebyshev expansion method is a very efficient numerical tool for studying spin-bath decoherence of quantum systems. We consider two typical problems arising in studying decoherence of quantum systems consisting of few coupled spins: (i) determining the pointer states of the system, and (ii) determining the temporal decay of quantum oscillations. As our results demonstrate, for determining the pointer states, the Chebyshev-based scheme is at least a factor of 8 faster than existing algorithms based on the Suzuki-Trotter decomposition. For the problems of second type, th…
We investigate the decoherence effect of a bosonic bath on the Berry phase of a spin-1/2 in a time-dependent magnetic field, without making the Markovian approximation. A two-cycle process resulting in a pure Berry phase is considered. The low-frequency quantum noise significantly affects the Berry phase. In the adiabatic limit, the high-frequency quantum noise only has a small effect. The result is also valid in some more general situations.
A perfect quantum state transfer(QST) has been shown in an engineered spin chain with "always-on interaction". Here, we consider a more realistic problem for such a protocol, the quantum decoherence induced by a spatially distributed environment, which is universally modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators. By making use of the irreducible tensor method in angular momentum theory, we investigate the effect of decoherence on the efficiency of QST for both cases at zero and finite temperatures. We not only show the generic exponential decay of QST efficiency as the number of sites increase, bu…
We evaluate the spin squeezing dynamics of N independent spin-1/2 particles with exchange symmetry. Each spin interacts with its own reservoir, and the reservoirs are independently and identical. The spin squeezing parameter is analytically calculated with different kinds of decoherence. The spin squeezing property vanishes with evolution time under the Markovian decoherence. Whereas coupled to the non-Markovian decoherence channels, the spin squeezing property collapses and revives with time. As spin squeezing can be regarded as a witness of multipartite entanglement, thus our scheme shows th…
We examine the influence of environmental interactions on simple quantum systems by obtaining the exact reduced dynamics of a qubit coupled to a one-dimensional spin bath. In contrast to previous studies, both the qubit-bath coupling and the nearest neighbor intrabath couplings are taken as the spin-flip XX-type. We first study the Rabi oscillations of a single qubit with the spin bath prepared in a spin coherent state, finding that nonresonance and finite intrabath interactions have significant effects on the qubit dynamics. Next, we discuss the bath-induced decoherence of the qubit when the …
We study the reduced dynamics of interacting spins, each coupled to its own bath of bosons. We derive the solution in analytic form in the white-noise limit and analyze the rich behaviors in diverse limits ranging from weak coupling and/or low temperature to strong coupling and/or high temperature. We also view the one spin as being coupled to a spin-boson environment and consider the regimes in which it is effectively nonlinear, and in which it can be regarded as a resonant bosonic environment.
It is discussed the decoherence problems in ensemble large-scale solid state NMR quantum computer based on the array of P donor atoms having nuclear spin I = 1/2. It is considered here, as main mechanisms of decoherence for low temperature (< 0.1 K), the adiabatic processes of random modulation of qubit resonance frequency determined by secular part of nuclear spin interaction with electron spin of the basic atoms, with impurity paramagnetic atoms and also with nuclear spins of impurity diamagnetic atoms. It was made estimations of allowed concentrations of magnetic impurities and of spin temp…
We study the dynamics of entanglement in spin gases. A spin gas consists of a (large) number of interacting particles whose random motion is described classically while their internal degrees of freedom are described quantum-mechanically. We determine the entanglement that occurs naturally in such systems for specific types of quantum interactions. At the same time, these systems provide microscopic models for non--Markovian decoherence: the interaction of a group of particles with other particles belonging to a background gas are treated exactly, and differences between collective and non--co…
This dissertation studies spin squeezing, entanglement and decoherence in large ensembles of cold, trapped alkali atoms with hyperfine spin f interacting with optical fields. Restricting the state of each atom to a qutrit embedded in the 2f+1 dimensional hyperfine spin enables us to efficiently model the coherent and dissipative dynamics of the ensemble. This formalism also allows us to explore the effects of local control on the internal hyperfine spins of the atoms. State preparation using such control increases the entangling power of the atom-light interface for f>1/2. Subsequent control o…
We study the decoherence of a coupled quantum system consisting of a central spin and its correlated environment described by a general $XY$ spin-chain model. We make it clear that the evolution of the coherence factor sensitively depends on the initial states of the environment spin-chain. Specially, the dynamical evolution of the coherence factor of the central spin is numerically and analytically investigated in both weak and strong coupling cases for different initial states including thermal equilibrium state. In both weak and strong coupling regimes, the decay of the coherence factor can…
We obtain criteria for entanglement and the EPR paradox for spin-entangled particles and analyse the effects of decoherence caused by absorption and state purity errors. For a two qubit photonic state, entanglement can occur for all transmission efficiencies. In this case, the state preparation purity must be above a threshold value. However, Bohm's spin EPR paradox can be achieved only above a critical level of loss. We calculate a required efficiency of 58%, which appears achievable with current quantum optical technologies. For a macroscopic number of particles prepared in a correlated stat…
The Lindblad generators of the master equation define which kind of decoherence happens in an open quantum system. We are working with a two qubit system and choose the generators to be projection operators on the eigenstates of the system and unitary bilocal rotations of them. The resulting decoherence modes are studied in detail. Besides the general solutions we investigate the special case of maximally entangled states - the Bell singlet states. The results are depicted in the so-called spin geometry picture which allows to illustrate the evolution of the (nonlocal) correlations stored in a…
The time evolution of a spin-1/2 particle under the influence of a locally applied external magnetic field, and interacting with anisotropic spin environment in thermal equilibrium at temperature $T$ is studied. The exact analytical form of the reduced density matrix of the central spin is calculated explicitly for finite number of bath spins. The case of an infinite number of environmental spins is investigated using the convergence of the rescaled bath operators to normal Gaussian random variables. In this limit, we derive the analytical form of the components of the Bloch vector for antifer…
Quantum decoherence plays a pivotal role in the dynamical description of the quantum-to-classical transition and is the main impediment to the realization of devices for quantum information processing. This paper gives an overview of the theory and experimental observation of the decoherence mechanism. We introduce the essential concepts and the mathematical formalism of decoherence, focusing on the picture of the decoherence process as a continuous monitoring of a quantum system by its environment. We review several classes of decoherence models and discuss the description of the decoherence …
The "self-induced decoherence" (SID) approach suggests that (1) the expectation value of any observable becomes diagonal in the eigenstates of the total Hamiltonian for systems endowed with a continuous energy spectrum, and (2), that this process can be interpreted as decoherence. We evaluate the first claim in the context of a simple spin bath model. We find that even for large environments, corresponding to an approximately continuous energy spectrum, diagonalization of the expectation value of random observables does in general not occur. We explain this result and conjecture that SID is li…
We study the spin squeezing property of weighted graph states, which can be used to improve the sensitivity in interferometry. Decoherence reduces the spin squeezing property but the result remains superior over other reference schemes with GHZ-type maximally entangled states and product states. We study the time evolution of spin squeezing of weighted graph states coupled to different decoherence channels. Based on the analysis, the spin squeezing of the weighted graph states is robust in the presence of decoherence and the decoherence limit in the improvement of the interferometric sensitivi…
We theoretically study the decoherence and the dynamical decoupling control of nitrogen-vacancy center electron spins in high-purity diamond, where the hyperfine interaction with $^{13}$C nuclear spins is the dominating decoherence mechanism. The decoherence is formulated as the entanglement between the electron spin and the nuclear spins, which is induced by nuclear spin bath evolution conditioned on the electron spin state. The nuclear spin bath evolution is driven by elementary processes such as single spin precession and pairwise flip-flops. The importance of different elementary processes…
We theoretically investigate spin decoherence of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Using the spin coherent state P-representation method, coherence evolution of the NV center surrounded by nitrogen electron spins (N) is simulated. We find that spin decoherence time as well as free-induction decay of the NV center depend on the spatial configuration of N spins. Both the spin decoherence rate (1/T2) and dephasing rate (1/T2*) of the NV center increase linearly with the concentration of the N spins. Using the P-representation method, we also demonstrate extracting noise spectrum o…
The problem of dipole-dipole decoherence of nuclear spins is considered for strongly entangled spin cluster. Our results show that its dynamics can be described as the decoherence due to interaction with a composite bath consisting of fully correlated and uncorrelated parts. The correlated term causes the slower decay of coherence at larger times. The decoherence rate scales up as a square root of the number of spins giving the linear scaling of the resulting error. Our theory is consistent with recent experiment reported in decoherence of correlated spin clusters.
