No Arabic abstract
We study the time evolution of four distance measures in the presence of initial systemenvironment correlations. It is well-known that the trace distance between two quantum states of an open system may increase due to initial correlations which leads to a breakdown of the contractivity of the reduced dynamics. Here we compare and analyze, for two different models, the time evolution of the trace distance, the Bures metric, the Hellinger distance and the Jensen-Shannon divergence regarding an increase above their initial values, witnessing initial correlations. This work generalizes, deepens and corrects the study performed by Dajka et al. [Phys. Rev. A 84 032120 (2011)] and thereby reveals generic features of the considered distance measures with respect to the capability of detecting initial system-environment correlations.
Fidelity plays an important role in quantum information theory. In this letter, we introduce new metric of quantum states induced by fidelity, and connect it with the well-known trace metric, Sine metric and Bures metric for the qubit case. The metric character is also presented for the qudit (i.e., $d$-dimensional system) case. The CPT contractive property and joint convex property of the metric are also studied.
The dependence of the dynamics of open quantum systems upon initial correlations between the system and environment is an utterly important yet poorly understood subject. For technical convenience most prior studies assume factorizable initial states where the system and its environments are uncorrelated, but these conditions are not very realistic and give rise to peculiar behaviors. One distinct feature is the rapid build up or a sudden jolt of physical quantities immediately after the system is brought in contact with its environments. The ultimate cause of this is an initial imbalance between system-environment correlations and coupling. In this note we demonstrate explicitly how to avoid these unphysical behaviors by proper adjustments of correlations and/or the coupling, for setups of both theoretical and experimental interest. We provide simple analytical results in terms of quantities that appear in linear (as opposed to affine) master equations derived for factorized initial states.
The quantum correlations between a qubit and its environment are described quantitatively in terms of interatomic distance. Specifically, considering a realistic system of two two-level atoms and taking into account the dipole-dipole interaction and collective damping, the quantum entanglement and quantum discord are investigated, during the dissipative process, as a function of the interatomic distance. For atoms that are initially maximally entangled, it turns out that there is a critical distance where each atom is maximally quantum correlated with its environment. Counterintuitively, the approach of the two atoms can maximize the entanglement between each one and the environment and, even at the same distance, minimize the loss of entanglement between the pair.
We study the dynamics of a quantum system whose interaction with an environment is described by a collision model, i.e. the open dynamics is modelled through sequences of unitary interactions between the system and the individual constituents of the environment, termed ancillas, which are subsequently traced out. In this setting non-Markovianity is introduced by allowing for additional unitary interactions between the ancillas. For this model, we identify the relevant system-environment correlations that lead to a non-Markovian evolution. Through an equivalent picture of the open dynamics, we introduce the notion of memory depth where these correlations are established between the system and a suitably sized memory rendering the overall system+memory evolution Markovian. We extend our analysis to show that while most system-environment correlations are irrelevant for the dynamical characterization of the process, they generally play an important role in the thermodynamic description. Finally, we show that under an energy-preserving system-environment interaction, a non-monotonic time behaviour of the heat flux serves as an indicator of non-Markovian behaviour.
Applications of quantum technology often require fidelities to quantify performance. These provide a fundamental yardstick for the comparison of two quantum states. While this is straightforward in the case of pure states, it is much more subtle for the more general case of mixed quantum states often found in practice. A large number of different proposals exist. In this review, we summarize the required properties of a quantum fidelity measure, and compare them, to determine which properties each of the different measures has. We show that there are large classes of measures that satisfy all the required properties of a fidelity measure, just as there are many norms of Hilbert space operators, and many measures of entropy. We compare these fidelities, with detailed proofs of their properties. We also summarize briefly the applications of these measures in teleportation, quantum memories, quantum computers, quantum communications, and quantum phase-space simulations.