We study the non-Markovian dynamics of a qubit made up of a two-level atom interacting with an electromagnetic field (EMF) initially at finite temperature. Unlike most earlier studies where the bath is assumed to be fixed, we study the coherent evolution of the combined qubit-EMF system, thus allowing for the back-action from the bath on the qubit and the qubit on the bath in a self-consistent manner. In this way we can see the development of quantum correlations and entanglement between the system and its environment, and how that affects the decoherence and relaxation of the system. We find non-exponential decay for both the diagonal and non-diagonal matrix elements of the qubit's reduced density matrix in the pointer basis. From the diagonal elements we see the qubit relaxes to thermal equilibrium with the bath. From the non-diagonal elements, we see the decoherence rate beginning at the usually predicted thermal rate, but changing to the zero temperature decoherence rate as the qubit and bath become entangled. These two rates are comparable, as was shown before in the zero temperature case [C. Anastopoulos and B. L. Hu, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 62} (2000) 033821]. On the entanglement of a qubit with the EMF under this type of resonant coupling we calculated, for the qubit reduced density matrix, the fidelity and the von Neumann entropy, which is a measure of the purity of the density matrix. The present more accurate non-Markovian calculations predict lower loss of fidelity and purity as compared with the Markovian results. Generally speaking, with the inclusion of quantum correlations between the qubit and its environment, the non-Markovian processes tend to slow down the drive of the system to equilibrium, prolonging the decoherence and better preserving the fidelity and purity of the system.
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.
We propose an effective Hamiltonian approach to investigate decoherence of a quantum system in a non-Markovian reservoir, naturally imposing the complete positivity on the reduced dynamics of the system. The formalism is based on the notion of an effective reservoir, i.e., certain collective degrees of freedom in the reservoir that are responsible for the decoherence. As examples for completely positive decoherence, we present three typical decoherence processes for a qubit such as dephasing, depolarizing, and amplitude-damping. The effects of the non-Markovian decoherence are compared to the …
A rapid restoration of the bath state is usually required to induce Markovian dynamics for an open quantum system, which typically can be realized only in limits such as weak system-bath coupling and infinitely large bath. In this work, we investigate the Markovianity of a qubit system coupled to a single-qubit bath with the qubit bath being continuously refreshed by quantum cooling. A surprising result is that there exists a finite threshold for the cooling rate at which the system transitions from non-Markovian dynamics to Markovian dynamics, which is in sharp contrast to the usual understan…
The well-known increase of the decoherence rate with the temperature, for a quantum system coupled to a linear thermal bath, holds no longer for a different bath dynamics. This is shown by means of a simple classical non-linear bath, as well as a quantum spin-boson model. The anomalous effect is due to the temperature dependence of the bath spectral profile. The decoherence reduction via the temperature increase can be relevant for the design of quantum computers.
We solve the optimal quantum limit of probing a classical force exactly by a damped oscillator initially prepared in the factorized squeezed state. The memory effects of the thermal bath on the oscillator evolution are investigated. We show that the optimal force sensitivity obtained by the quantum estimation theory approaches to zero for the non-Markovian bath, whereas approaches to a finite non-zero value for the Markovian bath as the energy of the damped oscillator goes to infinity.
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…
We propose a scheme to characterize the non-Markovian dynamics and quantify the non-Markovianity via the non-classicality measured by the negativity of quantumness. By considering a qubit in contact with a critical Ising spin bath and introducing an ancilla, we show that revivals of negativity of quantumness indicate the non-Markovian dynamics. Furthermore, a normalized measure of non-Markovianity based on the negativity of quantumness is introduced and the influences of bath criticality, bath temperature and bath size on the non-Markovianity are discussed. It is shown that, at the critical po…
Using the numerical path integral method we investigate the decoherence and relaxation of qubits in spin-boson (SB) and spin-intermediate harmonic oscillator (IHO)-bath (SIB) models. The cases that the environment baths with low and medium frequencies are investigated. It is shown that the qubits in SB and SIB models have the same decoherence and relaxation as the baths with low frequencies. However, the qubits in the two models have different decoherence and relaxation as the baths with medium frequencies. The decoherence and relaxation of the qubit in SIB model can be modulated through chang…
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 demonstrate in a very general fashion, considerable slowing down of decoherence and relaxation by fast frequency modulation of the system heat bath coupling. The slowing occurs as the decoherence rates are now determined by the spectral components of bath correlations which are shifted due to fast modulation. We present several examples including the slowing down of the heating of a trapped ion, where the system - bath interaction is not necessarily Markovian.
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…
In this paper, we provide a mechanism of decoherence suppression for open quantum systems in general, and that for "Schrodinger cat-like" state in particular, through the strong couplings to non-Markovian reservoirs. Different from the usual strategies of suppressing decoherence by decoupling the system from the environment in the literatures, here the decoherence suppression employs the strong back-reaction from non-Markovian reservoirs. The mechanism relies on the existence of the singularities (bound states) of the nonequilibrium retarded Green function which completely determines the dissi…
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.
Using the numerical path integral method we investigate the decoherence and relaxation of qubits coupled to an Ohmic bath directly and via an intermediate harmonic oscillator (IHO). Here, we suppose the oscillation frequencies of the bath modes are higher than the IHO's. When we choose suitable parameters the qubits in the two models may have almost same decoherence and relaxation times. However, the decoherence and relaxation times of the qubit in the qubit-IHO-bath model can be modulated through changing the coupling coefficients of the qubit-IHO and IHO-bath and the oscillation frequency of…
We study the relation between the sudden death and revival of the entanglement of two qubits in a common squeezed reservoir, and the normal decoherence, by getting closer to the Decoherence Free Subspace and calculating the effect on the death and revival times.
The dynamics of two interacting spins coupled to separate bosonic baths is studied. An analytical solution in Born approximation for arbitrary spectral density functions of the bosonic environments is found. It is shown that in the non-Markovian cases concurrence "lives" longer or reaches greater values.
We investigate the optimal control problem for non-Markovian open, dissipative quantum system. Optimal control using Pontryagin maximum principle is specifically derived. The influences of Ohmic reservoir with Lorentz-Drude regularization are numerically studied in a two-level system under the following three conditions: ω_0\llω_c, ω_0\approxω_c or ω_0\ggω_c, where ω_0 is the characteristic frequency of the quantum system of interest, and ω_c the cut-off frequency of Ohmic reservoir. The optimal control process shows its remarkable influences on the decoherence dynamics. The temperature is a k…
We study the dynamics of an open quantum system interacting with a non-thermal bath. Here, "non-thermal" means that the bath modes do not need to have the same temperature, but they have an effective temperature distribution. We find that, when a quantum system is interacting with such a non-thermal bath far from thermal equilibrium, it is no longer proper to use any coarse-grained Markovian description for the system, even when their coupling strength is quite weak. Especially, when there is coherent transition with strong interference strength in the quantum system, the Markovian master equa…
The decoherence of two initially entangled qubits in a non-Markovian reservoir has been investigated exactly without Born Markovian approximation and rotating-wave approximation(RWA). The non-perturbative quantum master equation is derived and its exact solution is obtained. The decoherence behaviors of two qubits, initially entangled in Bell states, has been investigated in three different cases of parameters. The results show that the counter-rotating wave terms have great influence on the decoherence behavior, and there are differences between the exact solution of the Hamiltonian with RWA …
We investigate quantum synchronization and correlations of two qutrits in one non-Markovian environment using the hierarchy equation method. There is no direct interaction between two qutrits and each qutrit interacts with the same non-Markovian environment. The influence of the temperature of the bath, correlation time, and coupling strength between qutrits and bath on the quantum synchronzation and correlations of two qutrits are studied without the Markovian, Born, and rotating wave approximations. We also discuss the influence of dissipation and dephasing on the synchronization of two qutr…
Decoherence in Markovian systems can result indirectly from the action of a system Hamiltonian which is usually fixed and unavoidable. Here, we show that in general in Markovian systems, because of the system Hamiltonian, quantum information decoheres. We give conditions for the system Hamiltonian that must be satisfied if coherence is to be preserved. Finally, we show how to construct robust subspaces for quantum information processing.
We study the analytically solvable Ising model of a single qubit system coupled to a spin bath. The purpose of this study is to analyze and elucidate the performance of Markovian and non-Markovian master equations describing the dynamics of the system qubit, in comparison to the exact solution. We find that the time-convolutionless master equation performs particularly well up to fourth order in the system-bath coupling constant, in comparison to the Nakajima-Zwanzig master equation. Markovian approaches fare poorly due to the infinite bath correlation time in this model. A recently proposed p…
We report an anomalous decoherence phenomenon of a quantum dissipative system in the framework of a stochastic decoupling scheme along with a hierarchical equations-of-motion formalism without the usual Born-Markov or weak coupling approximations. It is found that the decoherence of a two-qubit spin-boson model can be reduced by increasing the bath temperature in strong-coupling regimes. For the weak-coupling situation, we find that the bath temperature may enhance the decoherence. This result is contrary to the common recognition that a higher bath temperature always induces a more severe dec…
We study the non-Markovian decoherence and disentanglement dynamics of dissipative quantum systems with special emphasis on non-Gaussian continuous variable systems. The dynamics are described by the Hu-Paz-Zhang master equation of quantum Brownian motion. The time evolution of the decoherence function of a single-mode superposition is compared to the concurrence of a two-mode entangled state. It is verified that moderate non-Markovian influences slow down the decay of interference fringes and quantum correlations, while strong non-Markovian effects resulting from an out-of-resonance bath can …
Decoherence-free subspaces (DFSs) provide a strategy for protecting the dynamics of an open system from decoherence induced by the system-environment interaction. So far, DFSs have been primarily studied in the framework of Markovian master equations. In this work, we study decoherence-free (DF) states in the general setting of a non-Markovian fermionic environment. We identify the DF states by diagonalizing the non-unitary evolution operator for a two-level fermionic system attached to an electron reservoir. By solving the exact master equation, we show that DF states can be stabilized dynami…
It is known that one can characterize the decoherence strength of a Markovian environment by the product of its temperature and induced damping, and order the decoherence strength of multiple environments by this quantity. We show that for non-Markovian environments in the weak coupling regime there also exists a natural (albeit partial) ordering of environment-induced irreversibility within a perturbative treatment. This measure can be applied to both low-temperature and non-equilibrium environments.
The force estimation problem in quantum metrology with an arbitrary non-Markovian Gaussian bath is considered. No assumptions are made on the bath spectrum and coupling strength with the probe. Considering the natural global unitary evolution of both bath and probe and assuming initial global Gaussian states we are able to solve the main issues of any quantum metrological problem: the best achievable precision determined by the quantum Fisher information, the best initial state and the best measurement. Studying the short time behavior and comparing to regular Markovian dynamics we observe an …
We show that the influence of the shared phonon bath considered in H. Hossein-Nejad and G. D. Scholes, New J. Phys. 12, 065045 (2010) on the exciton transfer in a two-molecule system can be reproduced by that of an independent bath model.
A quantum collision model (CM), also known as repeated interactions model, can be built from the standard microscopic framework where a system S is coupled to a white-noise bosonic bath under the rotating wave approximation, which typically results in Markovian dynamics. Here, we discuss how to generalize the CM construction to the case of frequency-dependent system-bath coupling, which defines a class of colored-noise baths. This leads to an intrinsically non-Markovian CM, where each ancilla (bath subunit) collides repeatedly with S at different steps. We discuss the illustrative example of a…
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…
We consider the effect of broadband decoherence on the performance of refocusing sequences, having in mind applications of dynamical decoupling in concatenation with quantum error correcting codes as the first stage of coherence protection. Specifically, we construct cumulant expansions of effective decoherence operators for a qubit driven by a pulse of a generic symmetric shape, and for several sequences of $π$- and $π/2$-pulses. While, in general, the performance of soft pulses in decoupling sequences in the presence of Markovian decoherence is worse than that of the ideal $δ$-pulses, it can…
We evaluate exactly the non-Markovian effect on the decoherence dynamics of a qubit interacting with a dissipative vacuum reservoir and find that the coherence of the qubit can be partially trapped in the steady state when the memory effect of the reservoir is considered. Our analysis shows that it is the formation of a bound state between the qubit and its reservoir that results in this residual coherence in the steady state under the non-Markovian dynamics. A physical condition for the decoherence suppression is given explicitly. Our results suggest a potential way to decoherence control by …
A complete treatment of the entanglement of two-level systems, which evolves through the contact with a thermal bath, must include the fact that the system and the bath are not fully separable. Therefore, quantum coherent superpositions of system and bath states, which are almost never fully included in theoretical models, are invariably present when an entangled state is prepared experimentally. We show their importance for the time evolution of the entanglement of two qubits coupled to independent baths. In addition, our treatment is able to handle slow and low-temperature thermal baths.
We present a detailed study of the entanglement dynamics of a two-qubit system coupled to independent non-Markovian environments, employing hierarchy equations. This recently developed theoretical treatment can conveniently solve non-Markovian problems and take into consideration the correlation between the system and bath in an initial state. We concentrate on calculating the death and rebirth time points of the entanglement to obtain a general view of the concurrence curve and explore the behavior of entanglement dynamics with respect to the coupling strength, the characteristic frequency of…
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 analyze a system coupled to a bath of independent harmonic oscillators. We transform the bath in chain structure by solving an inverse eigenvalue problem. We solve the equations of motion for the collective variables defined by this transformation, and we derive the exact dynamics for an harmonic oscillator in terms of the microscopic motion of the environmental modes. We compare this approach to the well-known Generalized Langevin Equation and we show that our dynamics satisfies this equation.
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…
We explore the nonunital non-Markovian dynamics of a qubit immersed in a spin bath. The nonunital environmental effects on the precisions of quantum parameter estimation are investigated. The time-dependent transfer matrix and inhomogeneity vector are obtained for the description of the open dynamical process. The evolution of the coherent vectors for a qubit is studied so as to geometrically demonstrate the nonunital non-Markovian effects. The revivals of angles for the fidelity between a maximal mixed state and an arbitrary trajectory state are presented in the nonunital non-Markovian dynami…
We are considering a quantum version of the penny flip game, whose implementation is influenced by the environment that causes decoherence of the system. In order to model the decoherence we assume Markovian approximation of open quantum system dynamics. We focus our attention on the phase damping, amplitude damping and amplitude raising channels. Our results show that the Pauli strategy is no longer a Nash equilibrium under decoherence. We attempt to optimize the players' control pulses in the aforementioned setup to allow them to achieve higher probability of winning the game compared to the…
We present a detailed study of the dynamics of correlations in non-Markovian environments, applying the hierarchy equations approach. This theoretical treatment is able to take the system-bath interaction into consideration carefully. It is shown that crosses and sudden changes of classical and quantum correlations can happen if we gradually reduce the strength of the interactions between qubits. For some special initial states, sudden transitions between classical and quantum correlations even occur.
We study the quantum dynamics of a single qubit coupled to a bath of interacting spins as a model for decoherence in solid state quantum memories. The spin bath is described by the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model and the bath spins are subjected to a transverse magnetic field. We investigate the qubit interacting via either an Ising- or an XY-type coupling term to subsets of bath spins of differing size. The large degree of symmetry of the bath allows us to find parameter regimes where the initial qubit state is revived at well defined times after the qubit preparation. These times may become indep…
The solution of the quantum Zermelo navigation problem is applied to the non-Markovian open system dynamics of a set of quantum systems interacting with a common environment. We consider a case allowing an exact time-optimal realization of environment-mediated non-local system unitaries. For a linear coupling to a harmonic bosonic bath, we derive a speed limit for the implementation time in terms of the fundamental frequency of the bath modes. As a product of two exponentials of the local free wind and the pairwise system-coupling, the Zermelo unitary forms a natural building block for reachin…
We study the competing effects of simultaneous Markovian and non-Markovian decoherence mechanisms acting on a single spin. We show the existence of a threshold in the relative strength of such mechanisms above which the spin dynamics becomes fully Markovian, as revealed by the use of several non-Markovianity measures. We identify a measure-dependent nested structure of such thresholds, hinting at a causality relationship amongst the various non-Markovianity witnesses used in our analysis. Our considerations are then used to argue the unavoidably non-Markovian evolution of a single-electron qua…
We develop in the weak coupling approximation a quasi-non-Markovian master equation and study the phenomenon of decoherence during the operation of a controlled-not (CNOT) quantum gate in a quantum computer model formed by a linear chain of three nuclear spins system with second neighbor Ising interaction between them. We compare with the behavior of the Markovian counterpart for temperature different from zero (thermalization) and at zero temperature for low and high dissipation rates. At low dissipation there is a very small difference between Markovian and quasi no-Markovian at any temperat…
The dynamics of two coupled spins-1/2 coupled to a spin-bath is studied as an extended model of the Tessieri-Wilkie Hamiltonian \cite{TWmodel}. The pair of spins served as an open subsystem were prepared in one of the Bell states and the bath consisted of some spins-1/2 is in a thermal equilibrium state from the very beginning. It is found that with the increasing the coupling strength of the bath spins, the bath forms a resonant antiferromagnetic order. The polarization correlation between the two spins of the subsystem and the concurrence are recovered in some extent to the isolated subsyste…
Non-Markovianity, as an important feature of general open quantum systems, is usually difficult to quantify with limited knowledge of how the plant that we are interested in interacts with its environment-the bath. It often happens that the reduced dynamics of the plant attached to a non-Markovian bath becomes indistinguishable from the one with a Markovian bath, if we left the entire system freely evolve. Here we show that non-Markovianity can be revealed via applying local unitary operations on the plant-they will influence the plant evolution at later times due to memory of the bath. This n…
We analyze the non-Markovian character of the dynamics of an open two-level atom interacting with a gas of ultra-cold fermions. In particular, we discuss the connection between the phenomena of orthogonality catastrophe and Fermi edge singularity occurring in such a kind of environment and the memory-keeping effects which are displayed in the time evolution of the open system.
The longitudinal coupling of a system to the bath usually induces the pure dephasing of the system. In this paper, we study the collective dephasing induced dissipation and decoherence in a coupled-qubit system with a common bath. It is shown that, compared with the case of the same system with independent baths, the interference between the dephasing processes of different qubits induced by the common bath significantly changes the dissipation of the system. For the system of two coupled qubits, the interference leads to a faster decoherence in the non-single-excitation subspaces and a slower…
In this paper we study the decoherence and purity of a driven solid-state qubit in the Ohmic bath by using the method based on the master equation. At first, instead of solving the master equation we investigate the coefficients of the equation which describe the shift in frequency, diffusive, decoherence, and so on. It is shown that one of the coefficients (we called it decoherence coefficient) is crucial to the decoherence of the qubit in the model. Then we investigate the evolution of the purity of the state in the model. From the analysis of the purity we see that the decoherence time of t…
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 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…
The interrelationship between the non-Markovian stochastic Schrödinger equations and the corresponding non-Markovian master equations is investigated in the finite temperature regimes. We show that the general finite temperature non-Markovian trajectories can be used to derive the corresponding non-Markovian master equations. A simple, yet important solvable example is the well-known damped harmonic oscillator model in which a harmonic oscillator is coupled to a finite temperature reservoir in the rotating wave approximation. The exact convolutionless master equation for the damped harmonic os…
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 consider a free charged particle interacting with an electromagnetic bath at zero temperature. The dipole approximation is used to treat the bath wavelengths larger than the width of the particle wave packet. The effect of these wavelengths is described then by a linear Hamiltonian whose form is analogous to phenomenological Hamiltonians previously adopted to describe the free particle-bath interaction. We study how the time dependence of decoherence evolution is related with initial particle-bath correlations. We show that decoherence is related to the time dependent dressing of the partic…
