We consider a quantum system consisting of a regular chain of elementary subsystems with nearest neighbor interactions and assume that the total system is in a canonical state with temperature $T$. We analyze under what condition the state factors into a product of canonical density matrices with respect to groups of $n$ subsystems each, and when these groups have the same temperature $T$. While in classical mechanics the validity of this procedure only depends on the size of the groups $n$, in quantum mechanics the minimum group size $n_{min}$ also depends on the temperature $T $! As examples, we apply our analysis to a harmonic chain and different types of Ising spin chains. We discuss various features that show up due to the characteristics of the models considered. For the harmonic chain, which successfully describes thermal properties of insulating solids, our approach gives a first quantitative estimate of the minimal length scale on which temperature can exist: This length scale is found to be constant for temperatures above the Debye temperature and proportional to $T^{-3}$ below.
The nonzero ground-state energy of the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator implies quantum fluctuations around the minimum of the potential with the mean square value proportional to Planck's constant. In classical mechanics thermal fluctuations occur when the oscillator is coupled to a heat bath of temperature $T$. At finite temperature quantum statistical mechanics allows the description of the transition from pure quantum fluctuations at $T=0$ to classical thermal fluctuations in the high temperature limit. It was early pointed out by Peierls that the mean square thermal fluctuations in …
Thermalization in Spatially Extended Open Quantum Systems: Local versus Global Markovian Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences（马克斯·普朗克多学科科学研究所）；Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里康普顿斯大学）；University of Luxembourg（卢森堡大学）；Universidad de Chile（智利大学）
Under the influence of external environments, quantum systems can undergo various different processes, including decoherence and equilibration. We observe that macroscopic objects are both objective and thermal, thus leading to the expectation that both objectivity and thermalisation can peacefully coexist on the quantum regime too. Crucially, however, objectivity relies on distributed classical information that could conflict with thermalisation. Here, we examine the overlap between thermal and objective states. We find that in general, one cannot exist when the other is present. However, the…
Coherent signal containing thermal noise is a mixed state of radiation. There are two distinct classes of such states, a Gaussian state obtained by Glauber-Lachs mixing and a non-Gaussian state obtained by the canonical probabilistic mixing of thermal state and coherent state. Though both these versions are noise-included signal states, the effect of noise is less pronounced in the Glauber-Lachs version. Effects of these two distinct ways of noise addition is considered in the context of atom-field interaction; in particular, temporal evolution of population inversion and atom-field entangleme…
When engineering microscopic machines, increasing efficiency can often come at a price of reduced reliability due to the impact of stochastic fluctuations. Here we develop a general method for performing multi-objective optimisation of efficiency and work fluctuations in thermal machines operating close to equilibrium in either the classical or quantum regime. Our method utilises techniques from thermodynamic geometry, whereby we match optimal solutions to protocols parameterised by their thermodynamic length. We characterise the optimal protocols for continuous-variable Gaussian machines, whi…
We study the dynamics of the quantum Ising chain following a zero-temperature quench of the transverse field strength. Focusing on the behavior of two-point spin correlation functions, we show that the correlators of the order parameter display an effective asymptotic thermal behavior, i.e., they decay exponentially to zero, with a phase coherence rate and a correlation length dictated by the equilibrium law with an effective temperature set by the energy of the initial state. On the contrary, the two-point correlation functions of the transverse magnetization or the density-of-kinks operator …
We show that a quantum thermal transistor can also cause the transistor effect - where one out of three terminals can control the flow of heat current in the other two - with good amplification properties in the transient regime for certain paradigmatic initial states. We find three broad classes of transient quantum thermal transistors - the first having a smaller amplification than the steady state quantum thermal transistor, the second with better amplification but a smaller operating region in terms of temperature, and the third that gives higher amplification with a larger operating regio…
We make a detailed comparison between entanglement harvesting for uniformly accelerated detectors in vacuum and static ones in a thermal bath at the Unruh temperature and find that, for a small energy gap relative to the Heisenberg energy of the detectors, static detectors in the thermal bath can harvest more entanglement and possess a comparatively larger harvesting-achievable range than the uniformly accelerated ones; however, as the energy gap grows sufficiently large, the uniformly accelerated detectors are instead likely to harvest more entanglement and possess a relatively larger harvest…
In this study, we model a harmonic oscillator that enters an interferometer partially coupled to a thermal bath of oscillatory fields by employing a Brownian-type Lindblad master equation. More specifically, we investigate the dynamics and the variations of the thermodynamic quantities of the system at different temperatures. We recognize that although the system can remain coherent during its interaction with the thermal bath in the low-temperature limit, the system's entropy production violates the Clausius inequality. Furthermore, we argue that the system's coherence is the source of this v…
For the simulation of equilibrium states and finite-temperature response functions of strongly-correlated quantum many-body systems, we compare the efficiencies of two different approaches in the framework of the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). The first is based on matrix product purifications. The second, more recent one, is based on so-called minimally entangled typical thermal states (METTS). For the latter, we highlight the interplay of statistical and DMRG truncation errors, discuss the use of self-averaging effects, and describe schemes for the computation of response funct…
The control of thermal decoherence via dynamical decoupling and via the quantum Zeno effect (Zeno control) is investigated for a model of trapped ion, where the dynamics of two low lying hyperfine states undergoes decoherence due to the thermal interaction with an excited state. Dynamical decoupling is a procedure that consists in periodically driving the excited state, while the Zeno control consists in frequently measuring it. When the control frequency is high enough, decoherence is shown to be suppressed. Otherwise, both controls may accelerate decoherence.
In this paper, I calculate the large $N$ limit of marginal $O(N)$ models with non-polynomial potentials in arbitrary odd dimensions $d$. This results in a new class of interacting pure conformal field theories (CFTs) in $d=3+4n$ for any $n \in \mathbb{Z}_+$. Similarly, in $d=3+4n$ I calculate the thermal entropy for all couplings on $R^{2+4n} \times S^1$ for $n=0,1,2,3$. In 2+1 dimensions I find the strong-to-weak coupling ratio of the thermal entropy to be 4/5, matching recent results, and further extend this analysis to higher odd dimensions. Next, I calculated the vacuum entanglement entrop…
An analytical prediction is established of how an isolated many-body quantum system relaxes towards its thermal long-time limit under the action of a time-independent perturbation, but still remaining sufficiently close to a reference case whose temporal relaxation is known. This is achieved within the conceptual framework of a typicality approach by showing and exploiting that the time-dependent expectation values behave very similarly for most members of a suitably chosen ensemble of perturbations. The predictions are validated by comparison with various numerical and experimental results fr…
Energy equipartition is appropriate only for nonrelativistic classical mechanics, but has only limited relevance for a relativistic theory such as classical electrodynamics. In this article, we discuss harmonic-oscillator thermal equilibrium from three different perspectives. First, we contrast the thermal equilibrium of nonrelativistic mechanical oscillators (where point collisions are allowed and frequency is irrelevant) with the equilibrium of relativistic radiation modes (where frequency is crucial). The Rayleigh-Jeans law appears from applying a dipole-radiation approximation to impose th…
Coherence arises from the superposition principle, where it plays a central role in quantum mechanics. In [Phys.Rev.Lett.114,210401(2015)], it has been shown that the freezing phenomenon of quantum correlations beyond entanglement, is intimately related to the freezing of quantum coherence (QC). In this paper, we compare the behaviour of entanglement and quantum discord with quantum coherence in two di erent subsystems (optical and mechanical). We use respectively the en-tanglement of formation (EoF) and the Gaussian quantum discord (GQD) to quantify entanglement and quantum discord. Under the…
Quantum oscillators in Gaussian states are often characterized by average occupation numbers that refer to a basis of eigenstates of the non-interacting oscillator Hamiltonian. We argue that quantum state purity is a more appropriate characteristic of such states, which can be applied to oscillators of any dimensionality. For a one-dimensional oscillator, the state purity is directly related to a thermal occupation number defined with respect to the number state basis in which the oscillator's quantum state is thermal. Thus, it naturally introduces a more versatile definition of an average occ…
We present a scheme to evaluate thermodynamic variables for a system coupled to a heat bath under a time-dependent external force using the quasi-static Helmholtz energy from the numerically "exact" hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM). We computed the entropy produced by a spin system strongly coupled to a non-Markovian heat bath for various temperatures. We showed that when changes to the external perturbation occurred sufficiently slowly, the system always reached thermal equilibrium. Thus, we calculated the Boltzmann entropy and the von Neumann entropy for an isothermal process, as well…
We study the entanglement and the Bell nonlocality of a coupled two-qubit system, in which each qubit is coupled with one individual environment. We study how the nonequilibrium environments (with different temperatures or chemical potentials) influence the entanglement and the Bell nonlocality. The nonequilibrium environments can have constructive effects on the entanglement and the Bell nonlocality. Nonequilibrium thermodynamic cost can sustain the thermal energy or particle current and enhance the entanglement and the Bell nonlocality. However, the nonequilibrium conditions (characterized b…
Bocconi University（博科尼大学）；Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare（意大利国家核物理研究所）；International Centre for Theoretical Physics（国际理论物理中心）
Quantum annealers aim at solving non-convex optimization problems by exploiting cooperative tunneling effects to escape local minima. The underlying idea consists in designing a classical energy function whose ground states are the sought optimal solutions of the original optimization problem and add a controllable quantum transverse field to generate tunneling processes. A key challenge is to identify classes of non-convex optimization problems for which quantum annealing remains efficient while thermal annealing fails. We show that this happens for a wide class of problems which are central …
We show here that the recent work of Wolf and Wullschleger (quant-ph/0502030) on oblivious transfer apparently opens the possibility that non-local correlations which are stronger than those in quantum mechanics could be used for bit-commitment. This is surprising, because it is the very existence of non-local correlations which in quantum mechanics prevents bit-commitment. We resolve this apparent paradox by stressing the difference between non-local correlations and oblivious transfer, based on the time-ordering of their inputs and outputs, which prevents bit-commitment.
Variations of the bath energy are compared with the information flow in local dephasing channels. Special correlated initial conditions are prepared from the thermal equilibrium of the whole system, by performing a selective measurement on the qubit. The spectral densities under study are ohmic-like at low frequencies and include logarithmic perturbations of the power-law profiles. The bath and the correlation energy alternately increase or decrease, monotonically, over long times, according to the value of the ohmicity parameter, following logarithmic and power laws. Consider initial conditio…
The equivalence principle is the conceptual basis for general relativity. In contrast Mach's principle, although said to have been influential on Einstein in his formulation of general relativity, has not been shown to be central to the structure of general relativity. In this essay we suggest that the quantum effects of Hawking and Unruh radiation are a manifestation of a {\it thermal} Mach's principle, where the local thermodynamic properties of the system are determined by the non-local structure of the quantum fields which determine the vacuum of a given spacetime. By comparing Hawking and…
