In this paper we derive an extra class of non-Markovian master equations where the system state is written as a sum of auxiliary matrixes whose evolution involve Lindblad contributions with local coupling between all of them, resembling the structure of a classical rate equation. The system dynamics may develops strong non-local effects such as the dependence of the stationary properties with the system initialization. These equations are derived from alternative microscopic interactions, such as complex environments described in a generalized Born-Markov approximation and tripartite system-environment interactions, where extra unobserved degrees of freedom mediates the entanglement between the system and a Markovian reservoir. Conditions that guarantees the completely positive condition of the solution map are found. Quantum stochastic processes that recover the system dynamics in average are formulated. We exemplify our results by analyzing the dynamical action of non-trivial structured dephasing and depolarizing reservoirs over a single qubit.
A method for calculating partial widths of auto-ionizing states is proposed. It combines either a complex absorbing potential or exterior complex scaling with the Lindblad equation. The corresponding classical rate equations are reproduced, and the trace conservation inherent in the Lindblad equation ensures that the partial widths sums up to the total width of the initial auto-ionizing state.
We discuss a restriction on relaxation times derived from the Lindblad-type master equations for 2-level systems and show that none of the inverse relaxation times can be greater than the sum of the others. The relation is experimentally proved or disproved and can be considered to be a measure for or against the applicability of the Lindblad-type master equations and therefore of the so-called completely positive condition.
The spectral theorem is proven for the quantum dynamics of quadratic open systems of n fermions described by the Lindblad equation. Invariant eigenspaces of the many-body Liouvillean dynamics and their largest Jordan blocks are explicitly constructed for all eigenvalues. For eigenvalue zero we describe an algebraic procedure for constructing (possibly higher dimensional) spaces of (degenerate) non-equilibrium steady states.
The so-called Lindblad equation, a typical master equation describing the dissipative quantum dynamics, is shown to be solvable for finite-level systems in a compact form without resort to writing it down as a set of equations among matrix elements. The solution is then naturally given in an operator form, known as the Kraus representation. Following a few simple examples, the general applicability of the method is clarified.
We present a derivation of the Lindblad equation - an important tool for the treatment of non-unitary evolutions - that is accessible to undergraduate students in physics or mathematics with a basic background on quantum mechanics. We consider a specific case, corresponding to a very simple situation, where a primary system interacts with a bath of harmonic oscillators at zero temperature, with an interaction Hamiltonian that resembles the Jaynes-Cummings format. We start with the Born-Markov equation and, tracing out the bath degrees of freedom, we obtain an equation in the Lindblad form. The…
We investigate departures from the Hamiltonian dynamics such as the quantum decoherence in a supersymmetric quantum system due to its interaction with the environment. The effective description is given by the Franke-Gorini-Kossakowski-Lindblad-Sudarshan (FGKLS) equation. The prescription for supersymmetrization of this equation is elaborated and pairs of related isospectral quantum systems are built. We present some instructive examples of such a construction.
It is shown that in order for the solutions of the Lindblad equation never to give a decreasing von Neumann entropy, it is necessary and sufficient that the operators appearing in this equation should be unitary linear combinations of their adjoints. In this case, these operators may be replaced with Hermitian operators, without changing the evolution of density matrices.
The Lindblad equation describes the time evolution of a density matrix of a quantum mechanical system. Stationary solutions are obtained by time-averaging the solution, which will in general depend on the initial state. We provide an analytical expression for the steady states of the Lindblad equation using the quantum jump unraveling, a version of an ergodic theorem, and the stationary probabilities of the corresponding discret-time Markov chains. Our result is valid when the number of states appearing the in quantum trajectory is finite. The classical case of a Markov jump-process is recover…
In this paper we derive the Lindblad and Redfield forms with and without secular approximation from the Born-Markov master equation for open quantum systems. The spectral correlation tensor of bath (the Fourier transform of the bath correlation function) and then the coefficients in the two forms of the master equation are reevaluated according to the scheme in Ref.[Phys. Rev. A 99, 022118 (2019)]. They are complex numbers rather than the real numbers getting from traditional simplified methods. The dynamics of two models [one is an open three-level quantum system model, and the other is the m…
We present a closed form solution to the eigenvalue problem of a class of master equations that describe open quantum system with loss and dephasing but without gain. The method relies on the existence of a conserved number of excitation in the Hamiltonian part and that none of the Lindblad operators describe an excitation of the system. In the absence of dephasing Lindblad operators, the eigensystem of the Liouville operator can be constructed from the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian used in the quantum jump approach. Open versions of spin chains, the T…
The Lindblad equation describes the dissipative time evolution of a density matrix that characterizes an open quantum system in contact with its environment. The widespread ensemble interpretation of a density matrix requires its time evolution to be linear. However, when the density matrix is obtained from a mean field theory of interacting quantum systems or from a top-down control by a changing classical environment, the ensemble interpretation is inappropriate and nonlinear dynamics arise naturally. We therefore study the dynamical behavior of nonlinear Lindblad equations using the example…
We formulate the general approach based on the Lindblad equation to calculate the full counting statistics of work and heat produced by driven quantum systems weakly coupled with a Markovian thermal bath. The approach can be applied to a wide class of dissipative quantum systems driven by an arbitrary force protocol. We show the validity of general fluctuation relations and consider several generic examples. The possibilities of using calorimetric measurements to test the presence of coherence and entanglement in the open quantum systems are discussed.
Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems are described by the L-GKS equation, known also as the Lindblad equation. The equation is expressed by means of left and right matrix multiplications. This formulation hampers numerical implementations. Representing the dynamics by a matrix-vector notation overcomes this problem. We review three approaches to obtain such a representation. The methods are demonstrated for a driven two-level system subject to spontaneous emission.
Recently a generalized master equation was derived that extends the Lindblad theory to highly non-Markovian quantum processes (H.-P. Breuer, Phys. Rev. A \textbf{75}, 022103 (2007)). We perform a stochastic unravelling of this master equation by considering $n$ random state vectors that satisfy the corresponding stochastic differential equation for a piecewise deterministic process. As an application we consider a two-state system randomly coupled to an environment consisting of two energy bands with finite number of levels. Our numerical results are compared to results obtained from the time-…
We consider the accurate investigation of the energy current and its components, heat and work, in some boundary driven quantum spin systems. The expressions for the currents, as well as the associated Lindblad master equation, are obtained via a repeated interaction scheme. We consider small systems in order to analytically compute the steady distribution to study the current in the steady state. Asymmetrical XXZ and quantum Ising models are detailed analyzed. For the XXZ chain we present cases in which different compositions of heat and work currents, obtained via the repeated interaction pr…
It is shown how any Lindbladian evolution with selfadjoint Lindblad operators, either Markovian or nonMarkovian, can be understood as an averaged random unitary evolution. Both mathematical and physical consequences are analyzed. First a simple and fast method to solve this kind of master equations is suggested and particularly illustrated with the phase-damped master equation for the multiphoton resonant Jaynes-Cummings model in the rotating-wave approximation. A generalization to some intrinsic decoherence models present in the literature is included. Under the same philosophy a proposal to …
The Monte Carlo wave function method or the quantum trajectory/jump approach is a powerful tool to study dissipative dynamics governed by the Markovian master equation, in particular for high-dimensional systems and when it is difficult to simulate directly. In this paper, we extend this method to the non-Markovian case described by the generalized Lindblad master equation. Two examples to illustrate the method are presented and discussed. The results show that the method can correctly reproduce the dissipative dynamics for the system. The difference between this method and the traditional Mar…
In the framework of the Lindblad theory for open quantum systems, a master equation for the quantum harmonic oscillator interacting with a dissipative environment, in particular with a thermal bath, is derived for the case when the interaction is based on deformed algebra. The equations of motion for observables strongly depend on the deformation function. The expectation values of the number operator and squared number operator are calculated in the limit of a small deformation parameter for the case of zero temperature of the thermal bath. The steady state solution of the equation for the de…
We investigate generalized non-Markovian stochastic Schroeodinger equations (SSEs), driven by a multidimensional counting process and multidimensional Brownian motion introduced by A. Barchielli and C. Pellegrini [J. Math. Phys. 51, 112104 (2010)]. We show, that these SSEs can be translated in a non-linear form, which can be efficiently simulated. The simulation is illustrated by the model of a two-level system in a structured bath and the results of the simulations are compared with the exact solution of the generalized master equation.
We find the conditions under which a quantum regression theorem can be assumed valid for non-Markovian master equations consisting in Lindblad superoperators with memory kernels. Our considerations are based on a generalized Born-Markov approximation, which allows us to obtain our results from an underlying Hamiltonian description. We demonstrate that a non-Markovian quantum regression theorem can only be granted in a stationary regime if the dynamics satisfies a quantum detailed balance condition. As an example we study the correlations of a two level system embedded in a complex structured r…
Starting from the Liouville-von Neumann equation, under a weak coupling limit we derive the Lindblad master equation for the one-dimensional quantum Ising model in a Markov approximation and a rotating wave approximation. We also prove that the steady solution of the Lindblad equation is the canonical distribution independent of the dissipation rate.
An experimentally realizable model based on the interaction between an excited two-level atom and a radiation field inside two quantum electrodynamics cavities is proposed. It consists of sending an excited two-level atom through two serial cavities which contain the radiation field. Hence, the Lindblad master equation described the reduced density matrix of the joint-joint field system inside the cavities is exactly solved in Markovian and non-Markovian regimes. However, the rate of entanglement inherent in the total field-field system are evaluated using various witnesses of entanglement suc…
In this paper we demonstrate that Lindblad equations characterized by a random rate variable arise after tracing out a complex structured reservoir. Our results follows from a generalization of the Born-Markov approximation, which relies in the possibility of splitting the complex environment in a direct sum of sub-reservoirs, each one being able to induce by itself a Markovian system evolution. Strong non-Markovian effects, which microscopically originate from the entanglement with the different sub-reservoirs, characterize the average system decay dynamics. As an example, we study the anomal…
From the Hamiltonian connecting the inside and outside of an Fabry-Perot cavity, which is derived from the Maxwell boundary conditions at a mirror of the cavity, a master equation of a non-Lindblad form is derived when the cavity embeds matters, although we can transform it to the Lindblad form by performing the rotating-wave approximation to the connecting Hamiltonian. We calculate absorption spectra by these Lindblad and non-Lindblad master equations and also by the Maxwell boundary conditions in the framework of the classical electrodynamics, which we consider the most reliable approach. We…
We consider Lindblad equations for one dimensional fermionic models and quantum spin chains. By employing a (graded) super-operator formalism we identify a number of Lindblad equations than can be mapped onto non-Hermitian interacting Yang-Baxter integrable models. Employing Bethe Ansatz techniques we show that the late-time dynamics of some of these models is diffusive.
The Lindblad master equation for an open quantum system with a Hamiltonian containing an arbitrary potential is written as an equation for the Wigner distribution function in the phase space representation. The time derivative of this function is given by a sum of three parts: the classical one, the quantum corrections and the contribution due to the opening of the system. In the particular case of a harmonic oscillator, quantum corrections do not exist.
The aims of this paper are two. The first is to give a brief review of the most relevant theoretical results concerning the uniqueness of the steady-state solution of the Lindblad-Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan master equation and the criteria which guarantee relaxingness and irreducibility of dynamical semigroups. In particular, we test and discuss their physical meaning by considering their applicability to the characterisation of the simplest open quantum system \emph{i.e.} a two-level system coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators at zero temperature. The second aim is to provide a set of …
Recursive perturbation approach to time-convolutionless master equations: Explicit construction of generalized Lindblad generators for arbitrary open systems
Università degli Studi di Milano（米兰大学）；INFN, Sezione di Milano（意大利国家核物理研究所米兰分部）；University of Freiburg（弗赖堡大学）；Universität Siegen（锡根大学）；Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona（巴塞罗那自治大学）
Many current problems of interest in quantum non-equilibrium are described by time-local master equations (TLMEs) for the density matrix that are not of the Lindblad form, that is, that are not strictly probability conserving and/or Markovian. Here we describe an generic approach by which the system of interest that obeys the TLME is coupled to an ancilla, such that the dynamics of the combined system-plus-ancilla is Markovian and thus described by a Lindblad equation. This in turn allows us to recover the properties of the original TLME dynamics from a physical unravelling of this associated …
Realistic models of quantum systems must include dissipative interactions with an environment. For weakly-damped systems the Lindblad-form Markovian master equation is invaluable for this task due to its tractability and efficiency. This equation only applies, however, when the frequencies of any subset of the system's transitions are either equal (degenerate), or their differences are much greater than the transitions' linewidths (far-detuned). Outside of these two regimes the only available efficient description has been the Bloch-Redfield (B-R) master equation, the efficacy of which has lon…
We study the conditions under which one can conserve local translationally invariant operators by local translationally invariant Lindblad equations in one-dimensional rings of spin-1/2 particles. We prove that for any 1-local operator (e.g., particle density) there exist Lindblad dissipators that conserve that operator, while on the other hand we prove that among 2-local operators (e.g., energy density) only trivial ones of the Ising type can be conserved, while all the other cannot be conserved, neither locally nor globally, by any 2- or 3-local translationally invariant Lindblad equation. O…
The theory of open quantum system is one of the most essential tools for the development of quantum technologies. Furthermore, the Lindblad (or Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad) Master Equation plays a key role as it is the most general generator of Markovian dynamics in quantum systems. In this paper, we present this equation together with its derivation and methods of resolution. The presentation tries to be as self-contained and straightforward as possible to be useful to readers with no previous knowledge of this field.
Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad equation in different bases: application to driven-dissipative two- and multilevel systems
B. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine（乌克兰国家科学院B.维尔金低温物理与工程研究所）；Center for Quantum Computing, RIKEN（理化学院量子计算中心）；V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University（V.N.卡拉津哈尔科夫国立大学）；Department of Mathematics, Kyiv School of Economics（基辅经济学院数学系）
We consider the Lindblad equation for a collection of multilevel systems coupled to independent environments. The equation is symmetric under the exchange of the labels associated with each system and thus the open-system dynamics takes place in the permutation-symmetric subspace of the operator space. The dimension of this space grows polynomially with the number of systems. We construct a basis of this space and a set of superoperators whose action on this basis is easily specified. For a given number of levels, $M$, these superoperators are written in terms of a bosonic realization of the g…
The measurement-induced phase transition (MIPT) occurs when the system is evolving under unitary evolution together with local measurements followed by post-selection. We propose a generalized version of the Lindblad master equation as a continuous equation, to describe the dynamics of second Rényi entropy in the MIPT. This generalized Lindblad equation explicitly takes into account the post-selection in the MIPT, which is realized as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) state projection in the equation. Also, this generalized Lindblad equation preserves the Hermitian, unit trace, and positive de…
The Lindblad equation is an evolution equation for the density matrix in quantum theory. It is the general linear, Markovian, form which ensures that the density matrix is hermitian, trace 1, positive and completely positive. Some elementary examples of the Lindblad equation are given. The derivation of the Lindblad equation presented here is "simple" in that all it uses is the expression of a hermitian matrix in terms of its orthonormal eigenvectors and real eigenvalues. Thus, it is appropriate for students who have learned the algebra of quantum theory. Where helpful, arguments are first giv…
In this paper I investigate the usability of the characteristic functions for the description of the dynamics of open quantum systems focussing on non-Lindblad-type master equations. I consider, as an example, a non-Markovian generalized master equation containing a memory kernel which may lead to nonphysical time evolutions characterized by negative values of the density matrix diagonal elements [S.M. Barnett and S. Stenholm, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 64}, 033808 (2001)]. The main result of the paper is to demonstrate that there exist situations in which the symmetrically ordered characteristic funct…
In recent years, the Renyi entropy has repeatedly been discussed for characterization of quantum critical states and entanglement. Here, time evolution of the Renyi entropy is studied. A compact general formula is presented for the lower bound on the entropy rate.
For discrete-time systems, governed by Kraus maps, the work of D. Petz has characterized the set of universal contraction metrics. In the present paper, we use this characterization to derive a set of quadratic Lyapunov functions for continuous-time systems, governed by Lindblad differential equations, that have a steady-state with full rank. An extremity of this set is given by the Bures metric, for which the quadratic Lyapunov function is obtained by inverting a Sylvester equation. We illustrate the method by providing a strict Lyapunov function for a Lindblad equation designed to stabilize …
Time-dependent Lindblad master equations have important applications in areas ranging from quantum thermodynamics to dissipative quantum computing. In this paper we outline a general method for writing down exact solutions of time-dependent Lindblad equations whose superoperators form closed algebras. We focus on the particular case of a single qubit and study the exact solution generated by both coherent and incoherent mechanisms. We also show that if the time-dependence is periodic, the problem may be recast in terms of Floquet theory. As an application, we give an exact solution for a two-l…
The quantum dynamics of a damped and forced harmonic oscillator is investigated in terms of a Lindblad master equation. Elementary algebraic techniques are employed allowing for example to analyze the long time behavior, i.e. the quantum limit cycle. The time evolution of various expectation values is obtained in closed form as well as the entropy and the Husimi phase space distribution. We also discuss the related description in terms of a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian.
