We provide a microscopic derivation for the non-Markovian master equation for an atom-cavity system with cavity losses and show that they can induce population trapping in the atomic excited state, when the environment outside the cavity has a non-flat spectrum. Our results apply to hybrid solid state systems and can turn out to be helpful to find the most appropriate description of leakage in the recent developments of cavity quantum electrodynamics.
We study the laser-driven Dicke model beyond the rotating-wave approximation. For weak coupling of the system to environmental degrees of freedom the dissipative dynamics of the emitter-cavity system is described by the Floquet master equation. Projection of the system evolution onto the emitter degrees of freedom results in non-Markovian behavior. We quantify the non-Markovianity of the resulting emitter dynamics and show that this quantity can be used as an indicator of the dissipative quantum phase transition occurring at high driving amplitudes.
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.
The study of open quantum systems is important for fundamental issues of quantum physics as well as for technological applications such as quantum information processing. The interaction of a quantum system with its environment is usually detrimental for the quantum properties of the system and leads to decoherence. However, sometimes a coherent partial exchange of information takes place between the system and the environment and the dynamics of the open system becomes non-Markovian. In this article we study discrete open quantum system dynamics where single evolution step consist of local unitary transformation on the open system followed by a coupling unitary between the system and the environment. We implement experimentally a local control protocol for controlling the transition from Markovian to non-Markovian dynamics.
Employing the quadratic fermionic Hamiltonians for the collective and internal subsystems with a linear coupling, we studied the role of fermionic statistics on the dynamics of the collective motion. The transport coefficients are discussed as well as the associated fluctuation-dissipation relation. Due to different nature of the particles, the path to equilibrium is slightly affected. However, in the weak coupling regime, the time-scale for approaching equilibrium is found to be globally unchanged. The Pauli-blocking effect can modify the usual picture in open quantum system. In some limits, contrary to boson, this effect can strongly hinder the influence of the bath by blocking the interacting channels.
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.