Embedding dissipation and decoherence in unitary evolution schemes

Dissipation and decoherence, and the evolution from pure to mixed states in quantum physics, are handled through master equations for the density matrix. By embedding elements of this matrix in a higher-dimensional Liouville-Bloch equation, the methods of unitary integration are adapted to solve for the density matrix as a function of time, including the nonunitary effects of dissipation and decoherence. The input requires only solutions of classical, initial value time-dependent equations. Results are illustrated for a damped, driven two-level system.     

LMG model: Markovian evolution of classical and quantum correlations under decoherence

We have investigated the quantum phase transition in the ground state of collective Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model (LMG model) subjected to decoherence due to its interaction, represented by a quantum channel, with an environment. We discuss the behavior of quantum and classical pair wise correlations in the system, with the quantumness of correlations measured by quantum discord (QD), entanglement of formation (EOF), measurement-induced disturbance (MID) and the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt-Bell function (CHSH-Bell function). The time evolution established by system-environment interactions is assumed to be Markovian in nature and the quantum channels studied include the amplitude damping (AD), phase damping (PD), bit-flip (BF), phase-flip (PF), and bit-phase-flip (BPF) channels. One can identify appropriate quantities associated with the dynamics of quantum correlations signifying quantum phase transition in the model. Surprisingly, the CHSH-Bell function is found to detect all the phase transitions, even when quantum and classical correlations are zero for the relevant ground state.     

Transverse Ising model: Markovian evolution of classical and quantum correlations under decoherence

The transverse Ising Model (TIM) in one dimension is the simplest model which exhibits a quantum phase transition (QPT). Quantities related to quantum information theoretic measures like entanglement, quantum discord (QD) and fidelity are known to provide signatures of QPTs. The issue is less well explored when the quantum system is subjected to decoherence due to its interaction, represented by a quantum channel, with an environment. In this paper we study the dynamics of the mutual information I(ρ _AB ), the classical correlations C(ρ _AB ) and the quantum correlations Q(ρ _AB ), as measured by the QD, in a two-qubit state the density matrix of which is the reduced density matrix obtained from the ground state of the TIM in 1d. The time evolution brought about by system-environment interactions is assumed to be Markovian in nature and the quantum channels considered are amplitude damping, bit-flip, phase-flip and bit-phase-flip. Each quantum channel is shown to be distinguished by a specific type of dynamics. In the case of the phase-flip channel, there is a finite time interval in which the quantum correlations are larger in magnitude than the classical correlations. For this channel as well as the bit-phase-flip channel, appropriate quantities associated with the dynamics of the correlations can be derived which signal the occurrence of a QPT.     

Irreversibility of a quantum walk induced by controllable decoherence employing random unitary operations

Quantum walk is different from random walk in reversibility and interference. Observation of the reduced re- versibility in a realistic quantum walk is of scientific interest in understanding the unique quantum behavior. We propose an idea to experimentally investigate the decoherence-induced irreversibility of quantum walks with trapped ions in phase space via the average fidelity decay. By introducing two controllable decoherence sources, i.e., the phase damping channel (i.e., dephasing) and the high temperature amplitude reservoir (i.e., dissipation), in the intervals between the steps of quantum walk, we find that the high temperature amplitude reservoir shows more detrimental effects than the phase damping channel on quantum walks. Our study also shows that the average fidelity decay works better than the position variance for characterizing the transition from quantum walks to random walk. Experimental feasibility to monitor the irreversibility is justified using currently available techniques.     

量子Harper模型的量子计算鲁棒性与耗散退相干

运用量子轨迹和量子Monte Carlo仿真的方法，研究耗散退相干对周期驱动的量子Harper (quantum kicked Harper, QKH)模型量子计算的影响.数值仿真结果表明，一定强度的耗散干扰将破坏QKH特征状态的动态局域化以及相空间的随机网结构.以相位阻尼信道噪声模型为例分析了保真度的衰减规律以及可信计算时间尺度.与静态干扰相比，在干扰强度小于某一阈值时，耗散干扰下的可信计算时间尺度随量子比特的增加而快速下降；而在干扰强度大于该阈值时，静态干扰下的可信计算时间尺度下降更快.     

量子Harper模型的量子计算鲁棒性与耗散退相干

运用量子轨迹和量子Monte Carlo仿真的方法,研究耗散退相干对周期驱动的量子Harper (quantum kicked Harper, QKH)模型量子计算的影响.数值仿真结果表明,一定强度的耗散干扰将破坏QKH特征状态的动态局域化以及相空间的随机网结构.以相位阻尼信道噪声模型为例分析了保真度的衰减规律以及可信计算时间尺度.与静态干扰相比,在干扰强度小于某一阈值时,耗散干扰下的可信计算时间尺度随量子比特的增加而快速下降;而在干扰强度大于该阈值时,静态干扰下的可信计算时间尺度下降更快. 关键词： 量子计算 量子Harper模型 主方程 量子Monte Carlo方法     

The effect of environment induced pure decoherence on the generalized Jaynes-Cummings model

We have studied the effect of environment induced pure decoherence on the generalized Jaynes-Cummings model (JCM). This generalized JCM is introduced to take into account both atom-field interaction and a class of spin-orbit interactions in the same framework. For generalized JCM with atom-field interaction, it is shown that along with the suppression of the oscillatory behaviour of the atomic and field variables, in the steady state, atomic energy is transferred to the field or vice versa through the dressed state coherence depending on the initial condition of the atom-field system and the model under consideration. It is also shown that initial Poissonian field acquires a sub-Poissonian character in the steady state and thus all the nonclassical properties are not erased by the decoherence in JCM. An interesting effect of this decoherence mechanism is that it affects the population and coherence properties of the individual subsystem in a different way. As an example of generalized JCM with spin-orbit interaction, the dynamics of spin of the hydrogen atom in a magnetic field is studied to show the effect of decoherence.     

Random unitary qubit channels: entropy relations,private quantum channels and non-malleability

Channels encrypting quantum bits by the application of randomly chosen unitary operators are studied. Quantities based on averages of linear entropies which characterize certain aspects of the encoding quality and the non-malleability of the channels are introduced. The relation between the entropy of the classical key and the choice of the encryption operators with the behaviour of these properties is discussed. The extension of exact private quantum channels in order to improve non-malleability via additional encryption operators is considered.     

A quantum trajectory description of decoherence

A complete theoretical treatment in many problems relevant to physics, chemistry, and biology requires considering the action of the environment over the system of interest. Usually the environment involves a relatively large number of degrees of freedom, this making the problem numerically intractable from a purely quantum-mechanical point of view. To overcome this drawback, a new class of quantum trajectories is proposed. These trajectories, based on the same grounds as Bohmian ones, are solely associated to the system reduced density matrix, since the evolution of the environment degrees of freedom is not considered explicitly. Within this approach, environment effects come into play through a time-dependent damping factor that appears in the system equations of motion. Apart from their evident computational advantage, this type of trajectories also results very insightful to understand the system decoherence. In particular, here we show the usefulness of these trajectories analyzing decoherence effects in interference phenomena, taking as a working model the well-known double-slit experiment.     

Spin bath decoherence of quantum entanglement

We study an analytically solvable model for decoherence of a two spin system embedded in a large spin environment. As a measure of entanglement, we evaluate the concurrence for the Bell states (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs). We find that while for two separate spin baths all four Bell states lose their coherence with the same time dependence, for a common spin bath, two of the states decay faster than the others. We explain this difference by the relative orientation of the individual spins in the pair. We also examine how the Bell inequality is violated in the coherent regime. Both for one bath and two bath cases, we find that while two of the Bell states always obey the inequality, the other two violate the inequality at early times.     

Robustness of quantum correlations against decoherence

We study dynamics of nonclassical correlations by exactly solving a model consisting of two atomic qubits with spontaneous emission. We find that the nonclassical correlations defined by different measures give different qualitative characterizations of those correlations. The relative behaviors of those correlation measures are presented explicitly for various quantum states in the two-qubit atomic system. In particular, we find that the robustness of quantum correlations can be greatly enhanced by performing appropriate local unitary operations on the initial state of the system.     

Realization of quantum walks with negligible decoherence in waveguide lattices

Quantum random walks are the quantum counterpart of classical random walks, and were recently studied in the context of quantum computation. Physical implementations of quantum walks have only been made in very small scale systems severely limited by decoherence. Here we show that the propagation of photons in waveguide lattices, which have been studied extensively in recent years, are essentially an implementation of quantum walks. Since waveguide lattices are easily constructed at large scales and display negligible decoherence, they can serve as an ideal and versatile experimental playground for the study of quantum walks and quantum algorithms. We experimentally observe quantum walks in large systems ( approximately 100 sites) and confirm quantum walks effects which were studied theoretically, including ballistic propagation, disorder, and boundary related effects.     

Effect of pure phase decoherence on entanglement teleportation

We study entanglement teleportation in the two‐qubit XX Heisenberg model with pure phase decoherence taken into account. For some initial entangled states, pure phase decoherence has no effect on the teleported entanglement, while for others pure phase decoherence has a pronounced effect. In addition, entanglement sudden death happens in the latter case.     

Steering quantum nonlocalities of quantum dot system suffering from decoherence

The important applications of quantum dot system are to implement logic operations and achieve universal quantum computing based on different quantum nonlocalities. Here, we characterize the quantum steering, Bell nonlocality, and nonlocal advantage of quantum coherence (NAQC) of quantum dot system suffering nonunital and unital channels. The results reveal that quantum steering, Bell nonlocality, and NAQC can display the traits of dissipation, enhancement, and freezing. One can achieve the detections of quantum steering, Bell nonlocality, and NAQC of quantum dot system in different situations. Among these quantum nonlocalities, NAQC is the most fragile, and it is most easily influenced by different system parameters. Furthermore, considering quantum dot system coupling with amplitude damping channel and phase damping channel, these quantum nonlocalities degenerate with the enlargement of the channel parameters $t$ and $\varGamma$. Remarkably, measurement reversal can effectively control and enhance quantum steering, Bell nonlocality, and NAQC of quantum dot system suffering from decoherence, especially in the scenarios of the amplitude damping channel and strong operation strength.     

Spontaneous recoherence of quantum states after decoherence

In this work, we identify the set of time-dependent pure states building the statistical mixture to which a system, initially in a pure state, is driven by the reservoir. This set of time-dependent pure states, composing what we term a pure basis, are those that diagonalize the reduced density operator of the system. Next, we show that the evolution of the pure-basis states reveals an interesting phenomenon as the system, after decoherence, evolves toward the equilibrium: the spontaneous recoherence of quantum states. Around our defined recoherence time, the statistical mixture associated with a special kind of initial states termed even-symmetric, spontaneously undergoes a recoherence process, by which the initial state of the system emerges from the mixture except for its reduced excitation drained into the reservoir. This phenomenon reveals that the reservoir only shuffle the original information carried out by the initial state of the system instead of erasing it. Moreover, as the spontaneously recohered state occurs only for asymptotic time, we also present a protocol to extract it from the mixture through specific projective measurements. The password to retrieve the original information stems is the knowledge of both the initial state itself and the associated pure basis. A definition of the decoherence time of an N-state superposition is also presented.     

内禀退相干下Tavis-Cummings模型中原子的纠缠演化与贝尔不等式破坏

通过求解系统的Milburn方程，研究了两个二能级原子和单模场相互作用系统中原子间纠缠和贝尔不等式破坏随时间的演化特性，讨论了偶极相互作用、场与原子的失谐量对纠缠度以及贝尔不等式破坏的影响.结果表明：原子间偶极-偶极相互作用对纠缠度和贝尔不等式破坏有显著影响，失谐量增大会使两原子的纠缠度和贝尔不等式破坏变大，并且两原子所能达到稳定的纠缠受偶极相互作用系数与失谐量两者之差的影响.同时还发现两原子的纠缠与贝尔不等式破坏并不是单调的函数关系，很小的纠缠也可以产生贝尔不等式破坏. 关键词： Milburn理论 偶极-偶极相互作用 失谐量 贝尔不等式破坏     

Probing decoherence with electromagnetically induced transparency in superconductive quantum circuits

Superconductive quantum circuits comprise quantized energy levels that may be coupled via microwave electromagnetic fields. Described in this way, one may draw a close analogy to atoms with internal (electronic) levels coupled by laser light fields. In this Letter, we present a superconductive analog to electromagnetically induced transparency that utilizes superconductive quantum circuit designs of present day experimental consideration. We discuss how a superconductive analog to electromagnetically induced transparency can be used to establish macroscopic coherence in such systems and, thereby, be utilized as a sensitive probe of decoherence.     

Anomalies of weakened decoherence criteria for quantum histories

The theory of decoherent histories is checked for the requirement of statistical independence of subsystems. Strikingly, this is satisfied only when the decoherence functional is diagonal in both its real and imaginary parts. Although the weakened condition of consistency (or weak decoherence), allowing a nondiagonal imaginary part, is sufficient for the assignment of probabilities, it may easily violate the statistical independence of subsystems. Therefore, weakened consistency conditions and various related generalizations of the concept of decoherent histories appear to be ruled out. The same conclusion is obtained independently, by claiming a plausible dynamical robustness of decoherent histories.     

Scaling of decoherence in wide NMR quantum registers

Among the most important parameters for the usefulness of quantum computers are the size of the quantum register and the decoherence time for the quantum information. The decoherence time is expected to get shorter with the number of correlated qubits, but experimental data are only available for small numbers of qubits. Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance allows one to correlate large numbers of qubits (several hundred) and measure their decoherence rates. We use a modified magnetic dipole-dipole interaction to correlate the proton spins in a solid sample and observe the decay of the resulting highly correlated states. By systematically varying the number of correlated spins, we measure the increase of the decoherence rate with the size of the quantum register.