No Arabic abstract
The expected return time to the original state is a key concept characterizing systems obeying both classical or quantum dynamics. We consider iterated open quantum dynamical systems in finite dimensional Hilbert spaces, a broad class of systems that includes classical Markov chains and unitary discrete time quantum walks on networks. Starting from a pure state, the time evolution is induced by repeated applications of a general quantum channel, in each timestep followed by a measurement to detect whether the system has returned to the original state. We prove that if the superoperator is unital in the relevant Hilbert space (the part of the Hilbert space explored by the system), then the expectation value of the return time is an integer, equal to the dimension of this relevant Hilbert space. We illustrate our results on partially coherent quantum walks on finite graphs. Our work connects the previously known quantization of the expected return time for bistochastic Markov chains and for unitary quantum walks, and shows that these are special cases of a more general statement. The expected return time is thus a quantitative measure of the size of the part of the Hilbert space available to the system when the dynamics is started from a certain state.
We investigate the link between information and thermodynamics embodied by Landauers principle in the open dynamics of a multipartite quantum system. Such irreversible dynamics is described in terms of a collisional model with a finite temperature reservoir. We demonstrate that Landauers principle holds, for such a configuration, in a form that involves the flow of heat dissipated into the environment and the rate of change of the entropy of the system. Quite remarkably, such a principle for {it heat and entropy power} can be explicitly linked to the rate of creation of correlations among the elements of the multipartite system and, in turn, the non-Markovian nature of their reduced evolution. Such features are illustrated in two exemplary cases.
Simple examples are used to introduce and examine symmetries of open quantum dynamics that can be described by unitary operators. For the Hamiltonian dynamics of an entire closed system, the symmetry takes the expected form which, when the Hamiltonian has a lower bound, says that the unitary symmetry operator commutes with the Hamiltonian operator. There are many more symmetries that are only for the open dynamics of a subsystem. Examples show how these symmetries alone can reveal properties of the dynamics and reduce what needs to be done to work out the dynamics. A symmetry of the open dynamics of a subsystem can even imply properties of the dynamics for the entire system that are not implied by the symmetries of the dynamics of the entire system. The symmetries are generally not related to constants of the motion for the open dynamics of the subsystem. There are many symmetries that cannot be seen in the Schrodinger picture as symmetries of dynamical maps of density matrices for the subsystem. There are symmetries of the open dynamics of a subsystem that depend only on the dynamics. In the simplest examples, these are also symmetries of the dynamics of the entire system. There are many more symmetries, of a new kind, that also depend on correlations, or absence of correlations, between the subsystem and the rest of the entire system, or on the state of the rest of the entire system.
We study the time and space resolved dynamics of a qubit with an Ohmic coupling to propagating 1D photons, from weak coupling to the ultrastrong coupling regime. A nonperturbative study based on Matrix Product States (MPS) shows the following results: (i) The ground state of the combined systems contains excitations of both the qubit and the surrounding bosonic field. (ii) An initially excited qubit equilibrates through spontaneous emission to a state, which under certain conditions, is locally close to that ground state, both in the qubit and the field. (iii) The resonances of the combined qubit-photon system match those of the spontaneous emission process and also the predictions of the adiabatic renormalization [A. J. Leggett et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 59, 1, (1987)]. Finally, a non-perturbative ab-initio calculations show that this physics can be studied using a flux qubit galvanically coupled to a superconducting transmission line.
As the dimensions of physical systems approach the nanoscale, the laws of thermodynamics must be reconsidered due to the increased importance of fluctuations and quantum effects. While the statistical mechanics of small classical systems is relatively well understood, the quantum case still poses challenges. Here we set up a formalism that allows to calculate the full probability distribution of energy exchanges between a periodically driven quantum system and a thermalized heat reservoir. The formalism combines Floquet theory with a generalized master equation approach. For a driven two-level system and in the long-time limit, we obtain a universal expression for the distribution, providing clear physical insight into the exchanged energy quanta. We illustrate our approach in two analytically solvable cases and discuss the differences in the corresponding distributions. Our predictions could be directly tested in a variety of systems, including optical cavities and solid-state devices.
The scattering amplitude from a set of discrete states coupled to a continuum became known as the Fano profile, characteristic for its asymmetric lineshape and originally investigated in the context of photoionization. The generality of the model, and the proliferation of engineered nanostructures with confined states gives immense success to the Fano lineshape, which is invoked whenever an asymmetric lineshape is encountered. However, many of these systems do not conform to the initial model worked out by Fano in that i) they are subject to dissipative processes and ii) the observables are not entirely analogous to the ones measured in the original photoionization experiments. In this letter, we work out the full optical response of a Fano model with dissipation. We find that the exact result for absorption, Raman, Rayleigh and fluorescence emission is a modified Fano profile where the typical lineshape has an additional Lorentzian contribution. Expressions to extract model parameters from a set of relevant observables are given.