No Arabic abstract
The quantum stochastic Schroedinger equation or Hudson-Parthasareathy (HP) equation is a powerful tool to construct unitary dilations of quantum dynamical semigroups and to develop the theory of measurements in continuous time via the construction of output fields. An important feature of such an equation is that it allows to treat not only absorption and emission of quanta, but also scattering processes, which however had very few applications in physical modelling. Moreover, recent developments have shown that also some non-Markovian dynamics can be generated by suitable choices of the state of the quantum noises involved in the HP-equation. This paper is devoted to an application involving these two features, non-Markovianity and scattering process. We consider a micro-mirror mounted on a vibrating structure and reflecting a laser beam, a process giving rise to a radiation-pressure force on the mirror. We show that this process needs the scattering part of the HP-equation to be described. On the other side, non-Markovianity is introduced by the dissipation due to the interaction with some thermal environment which we represent by a phonon field, with a nearly arbitrary excitation spectrum, and by the introduction of phase noise in the laser beam. Finally, we study the full power spectrum of the reflected light and we show how the laser beam can be used as a temperature probe.
We construct a large class of completely positive and trace preserving non-Markovian dynamical maps for an open quantum system. These maps arise from a piecewise dynamics characterized by a continuous time evolution interrupted by jumps, randomly distributed in time and described by a quantum channel. The state of the open system is shown to obey a closed evolution equation, given by a master equation with a memory kernel and a inhomogeneous term. The non-Markovianity of the obtained dynamics is explicitly assessed studying the behavior of the distinguishability of two different initial systems states with elapsing time.
Quasi-periodically driven quantum parametric oscillators have been the subject of several recent investigations. Here we show that for such oscillators, the instability zones of the mean position and variance (alternatively the mean energy) for a time developing wave packet are identical for the strongest resonance in the three-dimensional parameter space of the quasi-periodic modulation as it is for the two-dimensional parameter space of the periodic modulations.
We investigate what a snapshot of a quantum evolution - a quantum channel reflecting open system dynamics - reveals about the underlying continuous time evolution. Remarkably, from such a snapshot, and without imposing additional assumptions, it can be decided whether or not a channel is consistent with a time (in)dependent Markovian evolution, for which we provide computable necessary and sufficient criteria. Based on these, a computable measure of `Markovianity is introduced. We discuss how the consistency with Markovian dynamics can be checked in quantum process tomography. The results also clarify the geometry of the set of quantum channels with respect to being solutions of time (in)dependent master equations.
We treat several key stochastic equations for non-Markovian open quantum system dynamics and present a formalism for finding solutions to them via canonical perturbation theory, without making the Born-Markov or rotating wave approximations (RWA). This includes master equations of the (asymptotically) stationary, periodic, and time-nonlocal type. We provide proofs on the validity and meaningfulness of the late-time perturbative master equation and on the preservation of complete positivity despite a general lack of Lindblad form. More specifically, we show how the algebraic generators satisfy the theorem of Lindblad and Gorini, Kossakowski and Sudarshan, even though the dynamical generators do not. These proofs ensure the mathematical viability and physical soundness of solutions to non-Markovian processes. Within the same formalism we also expand upon known results for non-Markovian corrections to the quantum regression theorem. Several directions where these results can be usefully applied to are also described, including the analysis of near-resonant systems where the RWA is inapplicable and the calculation of the reduced equilibrium state of open systems.
The purity, Tr(rho^2), measures how pure or mixed a quantum state rho is. It is well known that quantum dynamical semigroups that preserve the identity operator (which we refer to as unital) are strictly purity-decreasing transformations. Here we provide an almost complete characterization of the class of strictly purity-decreasing quantum dynamical semigroups. We show that in the case of finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces a dynamical semigroup is strictly purity-decreasing if and only if it is unital, while in the infinite dimensional case, unitality is only sufficient.