No Arabic abstract
We introduce a formalism for time-dependent correlation functions for systems whose evolutions are governed by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians of general type. It turns out that one can define two different types of time correlation functions. Both these definitions seem to be physically consistent while becoming equivalent only in certain cases. Moreover, when autocorrelation functions are considered, one can introduce another function defined as the relative difference between the two definitions. We conjecture that such a function can be used to assess the positive semi-definiteness of the density operator without computing its eigenvalues. We illustrate these points by studying analytically a number of models with two energy levels.
We study the quantum entropy of systems that are described by general non-Hermitian Hamiltonians, including those which can model the effects of sinks or sources. We generalize the von Neumann entropy to the non- Hermitian case and find that one needs both the normalized and non-normalized density operators in order to properly describe irreversible processes. It turns out that such a generalization monitors the onset of disorder in quantum dissipative systems. We give arguments for why one can consider the generalized entropy as the informational entropy describing the flow of information between the system and the bath. We illustrate the theory by explicitly studying few simple models, including tunneling systems with two energy levels and non-Hermitian detuning.
An extremely useful evolution equation that allows systematically calculating the two-time correlation functions (CFs) of system operators for non-Markovian open (dissipative) quantum systems is derived. The derivation is based on perturbative quantum master equation approach, so non-Markovian open quantum system models that are not exactly solvable can use our derived evolution equation to easily obtain their two-time CFs of system operators, valid to second order in the system-environment interaction. Since the form and nature of the Hamiltonian are not specified in our derived evolution equation, our evolution equation is applicable for bosonic and/or fermionic environments and can be applied to a wide range of system-environment models with any factorized (separable) system-environment initial states (pure or mixed). When applied to a general model of a system coupled to a finite-temperature bosonic environment with a system coupling operator L in the system-environment interaction Hamiltonian, the resultant evolution equation is valid for both L = L^+ and L eq L^+ cases, in contrast to those evolution equations valid only for L = L^+ case in the literature. The derived equation that generalizes the quantum regression theorem (QRT) to the non-Markovian case will have broad applications in many different branches of physics. We then give conditions on which the QRT holds in the weak system-environment coupling case, and apply the derived evolution equation to a problem of a two-level system (atom) coupled to a finite-temperature bosonic environment (electromagnetic fields) with L eq L^+.
The quantum Fisher information constrains the achievable precision in parameter estimation via the quantum Cramer-Rao bound, which has attracted much attention in Hermitian systems since the 60s of the last century. However, less attention has been paid to non-Hermitian systems. In this Letter, working with different logarithmic operators, we derive two previously unknown expressions for quantum Fisher information, and two Cramer-Rao bounds lower than the well-known one are found for non-Hermitian systems. These lower bounds are due to the merit of non-Hermitian observable and it can be understood as a result of extended regimes of optimization. Two experimentally feasible examples are presented to illustrate the theory, saturation of these bounds and estimation precisions beyond the Heisenberg limit are predicted and discussed. A setup to measure non-Hermitian observable is also proposed.
This work concerns the dynamical two-point spin correlation functions of the transverse Ising quantum chain at finite (non-zero) temperature, in the universal region near the quantum critical point. They are correlation functions of twist fields in the massive Majorana fermion quantum field theory. At finite temperature, these are known to satisfy a set of integrable partial differential equations, including the sinh-Gordon equation. We apply the classical inverse scattering method to study them, finding that the ``initial scattering data corresponding to the correlation functions are simply related to the one-particle finite-temperature form factors calculated recently by one of the authors. The set of linear integral equations (Gelfand-Levitan-Marchenko equations) associated to the inverse scattering problem then gives, in principle, the two-point functions at all space and time separations, and all temperatures. From them, we evaluate the large-time asymptotic expansion ``near the light cone, in the region where the difference between the space and time separations is of the order of the correlation length.
Using Schwinger Variational Principle we solve the problem of quantum harmonic oscillator with time dependent frequency. Here, we do not take the usual approach which implicitly assumes an adiabatic behavior for the frequency. Instead, we propose a new solution where the frequency only needs continuity in its first derivative or to have a finite set of removable discontinuities.