Quantum Flows as Markovian Limit of Emission,Absorption and Scattering Interactions

We consider a Markovian approximation, of weak coupling type, to an open system perturbation involving emission, absorption and scattering by reservoir quanta. The result is the general form for a quantum stochastic flow driven by creation, annihilation and gauge processes. A weak matrix limit is established for the convergence of the interaction-picture unitary to a unitary, adapted quantum stochastic process and of the Heisenberg dynamics to the corresponding quantum stochastic flow: the convergence strategy is similar to the quantum functional central limits introduced by Accardi, Frigerio and Lu [1]. The principal terms in the Dyson series expansions are identified and re-summed after the limit to obtain explicit quantum stochastic differential equations with renormalized coefficients. An extension of the Pulé inequalities [2] allows uniform estimates for the Dyson series expansion for both the unitary operator and the Heisenberg evolution to be obtained.     

Fluctuations of Quantum Currents and Unravelings of Master Equations

The very notion of a current fluctuation is problematic in the quantum context. We study that problem in the context of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, both in a microscopic setup and in a Markovian model. Our answer is based on a rigorous result that relates the weak coupling limit of fluctuations of reservoir observables under a global unitary evolution with the statistics of the so-called quantum trajectories. These quantum trajectories are frequently considered in the context of quantum optics, but they remain useful for more general nonequilibrium systems. In contrast with the approaches found in the literature, we do not assume that the system is continuously monitored. Instead, our starting point is a relatively realistic unitary dynamics of the full system     

High-dimensional quantum state transfer in a noisy network environment

We propose and analyze an efficient high-dimensional quantum state transfer protocol in an XX coupling spin network with a hypercube structure or chain structure. Under free spin wave approximation, unitary evolution results in a perfect high-dimensional quantum swap operation requiring neither external manipulation nor weak coupling. Evolution time is independent of either distance between registers or dimensions of sent states, which can improve the computational efficiency. In the low temperature regime and thermodynamic limit, the decoherence caused by a noisy environment is studied with a model of an antiferromagnetic spin bath coupled to quantum channels via an Ising-type interaction. It is found that while the decoherence reduces the fidelity of state transfer, increasing intra-channel coupling can strongly suppress such an effect. These observations demonstrate the robustness of the proposed scheme.     

Dissipative quantum Church-Turing theorem

We show that the time evolution of an open quantum system, described by a possibly time dependent Liouvillian, can be simulated by a unitary quantum circuit of a size scaling polynomially in the simulation time and the size of the system. An immediate consequence is that dissipative quantum computing is no more powerful than the unitary circuit model. Our result can be seen as a dissipative Church-Turing theorem, since it implies that under natural assumptions, such as weak coupling to an environment, the dynamics of an open quantum system can be simulated efficiently on a quantum computer. Formally, we introduce a Trotter decomposition for Liouvillian dynamics and give explicit error bounds. This constitutes a practical tool for numerical simulations, e.g., using matrix-product operators. We also demonstrate that most quantum states cannot be prepared efficiently.     

Properties of quantum Markovian master equations

In this paper we give an essentially self-contained account of some general structural properties of the dynamics of quantum open Markovian systems. We review some recent results regarding the problem of the classification of quantum Markovian master equations and the limiting conditions under which the dynamical evolution of a quantum open system obeys an exact semigroup law (weak coupling limit and singular coupling limit). We discuss a general form of quantum detailed balance and its relation to thermal relaxation and to microreversibility.     

Observation of the Fano-Kondo antiresonance in a quantum wire with a side-coupled quantum dot

We have observed the Fano-Kondo antiresonance in a quantum wire with a side-coupled quantum dot. In a weak coupling regime, dips due to the Fano effect appeared. As the coupling strength increased, conductance in the regions between the dips decreased alternately. From the temperature dependence and the response to the magnetic field, we conclude that the conductance reduction is due to the Fano-Kondo antiresonance. At a Kondo valley with the Fano parameter q approximately 0, the phase shift is locked to pi/2 against the gate voltage when the system is close to the unitary limit in agreement with theoretical predictions by Gerland et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 3710 (2000)].     

The weak coupling limit as a quantum functional central limit

We show that, in the weak coupling limit, the laser model process converges weakly in the sense of the matrix elements to a quantum diffusion whose equation is explicitly obtained. We prove convergence, in the same sense, of the Heisenberg evolution of an observable of the system to the solution of a quantum Langevin equation. As a corollary of this result, via the quantum Feynman-Kac technique, one can recover previous results on the quantum master equation for reduced evolutions of open systems. When applied to some particular model (e.g. the free Boson gas) our results allow to interpret the Lamb shift as an Ito correction term and to express the pumping rates in terms of quantities related to the original Hamiltonian model.     

Quantum walks with an anisotropic coin II: scattering theory

We perform the scattering analysis of the evolution operator of quantum walks with an anisotropic coin, and we prove a weak limit theorem for their asymptotic velocity. The quantum walks that we consider include one-defect models, two-phase quantum walks, and topological phase quantum walks as special cases. Our analysis is based on an abstract framework for the scattering theory of unitary operators in a two-Hilbert spaces setting, which is of independent interest.

     

Quantum speed limit for mixed states in a unitary system

Since the evolution of a mixed state in a unitary system is equivalent to the joint evolution of the eigenvectors contained in it, we could use the tool of instantaneous angular velocity for pure states to study the quantum speed limit (QSL) of a mixed state. We derive a lower bound for the evolution time of a mixed state to a target state in a unitary system, which automatically reduces to the quantum speed limit induced by the Fubini-Study metric for pure states. The computation of the QSL of a degenerate mixed state is more complicated than that of a non-degenerate mixed state, where we have to make a singular value decomposition (SVD) on the inner product between the two eigenvector matrices of the initial and target states. By combing these results, a lower bound for the evolution time of a general mixed state is presented. In order to compare the tightness among the lower bound proposed here and lower bounds reported in the references, two examples in a single-qubit system and in a single-qutrit system are studied analytically and numerically, respectively. All conclusions derived in this work are independent of the eigenvalues of the mixed state, which is in accord with the evolution properties of a quantum unitary system.     

Markovian evolution of Gaussian states in the semiclassical limit

We derive an approximate Gaussian solution of the Lindblad equation in the semiclassical limit, given a general Hamiltonian and linear coupling with the environment. The theory is carried out in the chord representation and describes the evolved quantum characteristic function, which gives direct access to the Wigner function and the position representation of the density operator by Fourier transforms. The propagation is based on a system of non-linear equations taking place in a double phase space, which coincides with Heller's theory of unitary evolution of Gaussian wave packets when the Lindbladian part is zero. The example of a double well is worked out.     

From the N-body Schrödinger Equation to the Quantum Boltzmann Equation: a Term-by-Term Convergence Result in the Weak Coupling Regime

In this paper we analyze the asymptotic dynamics of a system of N quantum particles, in a weak coupling regime. Particles are assumed statistically independent at the initial time. Our approach follows the strategy introduced by the authors in a previous work [BCEP1]: we compute the time evolution of the Wigner transform of the one-particle reduced density matrix; it is represented by means of a perturbation series, whose expansion is obtained upon iterating the Duhamel formula; this approach allows us to follow the arguments developed by Lanford [L] for classical interacting particles evolving in a low density regime. We prove, under suitable assumptions on the interaction potential, that the complete perturbation series converges term-by-term, for all times, towards the solution of a Boltzmann equation. The present paper completes the previous work [BCEP1]: it is proved there that a subseries of the complete perturbation expansion converges uniformly, for short times, towards the solution to the nonlinear quantum Boltzmann equation. This previous result holds for (smooth) potentials having possibly non-zero mean value. The present text establishes that the terms neglected at once in [BCEP1], on a purely heuristic basis, indeed go term-by-term to zero along the weak coupling limit, at least for potentials having zero mean. Our analysis combines stationary phase arguments with considerations on the nature of the various Feynman graphs entering the expansion.     

Singular Perturbation of Quantum Stochastic Differential Equations with Coupling Through an Oscillator Mode

We consider a physical system which is coupled indirectly to a Markovian resevoir through an oscillator mode. This is the case, for example, in the usual model of an atomic sample in a leaky optical cavity which is ubiquitous in quantum optics. In the strong coupling limit the oscillator can be eliminated entirely from the model, leaving an effective direct coupling between the system an the resevoir. Here we provide a mathematically rigorous treatment of this limit as a weak limit of the time evolution and observables on a suitably chosen exponential domain in Fock space. The resulting effective model may contain emission and absorption as well as scattering interactions. R.v.H. is supported by the Army Research Office under Grant W911NF-06-1-0378.     

Nonperturbative, Unitary Quantum-Particle Scattering Amplitudes from Three-Particle Equations

We here use our nonperturbative, cluster decomposable relativistic scattering formalism to calculate photon–spinor scattering, including the related particle–antiparticle annihilation amplitude. We start from a three-body system in which the unitary pair interactions contain the kinematic possibility of single quantum exchange and the symmetry properties needed to identify and substitute antiparticles for particles. We extract from it a unitary two-particle amplitude for quantum–particle scattering. We verify that we have done this correctly by showing that our calculated photon–spinor amplitude reduces in the weak coupling limit to the usual lowest order, manifestly covariant (QED) result with the correct normalization. That we are able to successfully do this directly demonstrates that renormalizability need not be a fundamental requirement for all physically viable models.     

From quantum cellular automata to quantum lattice gases

A natural architecture for nanoscale quantum computation is that of a quantum cellular automaton. Motivated by this observation, we begin an investigation of exactly unitary cellular automata. After proving that there can be no nontrivial, homogeneous, local, unitary, scalar cellular automaton in one dimension, we weaken the homogeneity condition and show that there are nontrivial, exactly unitary, partitioning cellular automata. We find a one-parameter family of evolution rules which are best interpreted as those for a one-particle quantum automaton. This model is naturally reformulated as a two component cellular automaton which we demonstrate to limit to the Dirac equation. We describe two generalizations of this automaton, the second, of which, to multiple interacting particles, is the correct definition of a quantum lattice gas.     

Hanle effect driven by weak localization

The influence of weak localization on the Hanle effect in a two-dimensional system with a spin-split spectrum is considered. We show that weak localization drastically changes the dependence of a stationary spin polarization S on an external magnetic field B. In particular, the nonanalytic dependence of S on B is predicted for III-V-based quantum wells grown in the [110] direction and for the [100]-grown quantum wells having equal strengths of Dresselhaus and Bychkov-Rashba spin-orbit coupling. It is shown that in a weakly localized regime the components of S are discontinuous at B = 0. At low B, the magnetic field-induced rotation of the stationary polarization is determined by quantum interference effects. This implies that the Hanle effect in such systems is totally driven by weak localization.     

Dissipative death of quantum coherences in a spin system

We investigate the influence of weak dissipation on the dynamics of a kicked spin system. Compared to its classical limit the quantum system is strongly affected by small dissipation. We present the attenuation of two different intrinsically quantum phenomena, recurrencies and tunneling. We find agreement of analytical perturbative estimates and numerical results. We further show that dissipation acts quite differently on the quantum evolution depending on whether we are in a classically chaotic or regular domain.     

An impurity-induced gap system as a quantum data bus for quantum state transfer

We introduce a tight-binding chain with a single impurity to act as a quantum data bus for perfect quantum state transfer. Our proposal is based on the weak coupling limit of the two outermost quantum dots to the data bus, which is a gapped system induced by the impurity. By connecting two quantum dots to two sites of the data bus, the system can accomplish a high-fidelity and long-distance quantum state transfer. Numerical simulations for finite system show that the numerical and analytical results of the effective coupling strength agree well with each other. Moreover, we study the robustness of this quantum communication protocol in the presence of disorder in the couplings between the nearest-neighbor quantum dots. We find that the gap of the system plays an important role in robust quantum state transfer.     

Quantum speedup via engineering multiple environments

Evolution speed of an open quantum system is vividly influenced by the structure of environments. The strong system‐environment coupling is found to be able to accelerate quantum evolution. In this work, we propose a different method of governing the quantum speedup via engineering multiple environments. It is shown that, with a judicious choice of the number of coupling environments, the quantum speedup of an open system can be achieved even under weak system‐environment coupling conditions. The mechanism for the speedup is due to the switch between Markovian and non‐Markovian regions by manipulating the number of the surrounding environments. In addition, we verify the above phenomena by using quantum dots embedded in a planar photonic crystal under current technologies. These results provide a new degree of freedoms to accelerate quantum evolution of open systems. The strong system‐environment coupling can speed up the quantum evolution process. This work shows that, via engineering multiple environments, one can speed up the evolution process even under weak coupling conditions.     

Dynamics of geometric phase for composite quantum system under nonlocal unitary transformation: a case study of dimer system

In this paper, we explore the dynamical properties of geometric phase for a composite quantum system under the nonlocal unitary evolution. As an illustrative example, the analytical expressions of geometric phase are derived for the dimer system. We find that geometric phase presents some interesting properties with coupling strengths (corresponding to nonlocal unitary evolution), such as dynamical oscillation behavior with time evolution, monotonicity, symmetry, etc. We show that the geometric phase and entanglement have the same period for some conditions. Moreover, we discuss geometric phase of the whole system and its subsystems. Our investigations show that geometric phase can reflect some inherent properties of the system: it signals a transition from self-trapping to delocalization.     

Physical solutions for unitary matrix models

We study the simplest double scaling limit of the integral over a unitary matrix, shown by Periwal and Shevitz to admit an exact solution in terms of the mKdV hierarchy. We show that there is a unique non-perturbative solution of the string equation corresponding to the true double scaling limit of the integral, which interpolates smoothly between weak and strong coupling regimes.