We extend on ideas from standard thermodynamics to show that temperature can be assigned to a general nonequilibrium quantum system. By choosing a physically motivated complete set of observables and expanding the system state thereupon, one can read
a set of relevant, independent thermodynamic variables which include internal energy. This expansion allows us to read a nonequilibrium temperature as the partial derivative of the von Neumann entropy with respect to internal energy. We show that this definition of temperature is one of a set of thermodynamics parameters unambiguously describing the system state. It has appealing features such as positivity for passive states and consistency with the standard temperature for thermal states. By attributing temperature to correlations in a bipartite system, we obtain a universal relation which connects the temperatures of subsystems, total system as a whole, and correlation. All these temperatures can be different even when the composite system is in a well-defined Gibbsian thermal state.
Understanding system-bath correlations in open quantum systems is essential for various quantum information and technology applications. Derivations of most master equations (MEs) for the dynamics of open systems require approximations that mask depe
ndence of the system dynamics on correlations, since the MEs focus on reduced system dynamics. Here we demonstrate that the most common MEs indeed contain hidden information about explicit system-environment correlation. We unfold these correlations by recasting the MEs into a universal form in which the system-bath correlation operator appears. The equations include the Lindblad, Redfield, second-order time-convolutionless, second-order Nakajima-Zwanzig, and second-order universal Lindblad-like cases. We further illustrate our results in an example, which implies that the second-order universal Lindblad-like equation captures correlation more accurately than other standard techniques.
Correlations disguised in various forms underlie a host of important phenomena in classical and quantum systems, such as information and energy exchanges. The quantum mutual information and the norm of the correlation matrix are both considered as pr
oper measures of total correlations. We demonstrate that, when applied to the same system, these two measures can actually show significantly different behavior except at least in two limiting cases: when there are no correlations and when there is maximal quantum entanglement. We further quantify the discrepancy by providing analytic formulas for time derivatives of the measures for an interacting bipartite system evolving unitarily. We argue that to properly account for correlations, one should consider the full information provided by the correlation matrix (and reduced states of the subsystems). Scalar quantities such as the norm of the correlation matrix or the quantum mutual information can only capture a part of the complex features of correlations. As a concrete example, we show that in describing heat exchange associated with correlations, neither of these quantities can fully capture the underlying physics.
A universal scheme is introduced to speed up the dynamics of a driven open quantum system along a prescribed trajectory of interest. This framework generalizes counterdiabatic driving to open quantum processes. Shortcuts to adiabaticity designed in t
his fashion can be implemented in two alternative physical scenarios: one characterized by the presence of balanced gain and loss, the other involves non-Markovian dynamics with time-dependent Lindblad operators. As an illustration, we engineer superadiabatic cooling, heating, and isothermal strokes for a two-level system, and provide a protocol for the fast thermalization of a quantum oscillator.
We introduce a new dynamical picture, referred to as correlation picture, which connects a correlated state to its uncorrelated counterpart. Using this picture allows us to derive an exact dynamical equation for a general open-system dynamics with sy
stem--environment correlations included. This exact dynamics is in the form of a Lindblad-like equation even in the presence of initial system-environment correlations. For explicit calculations, we also develop a weak-correlation expansion formalism that allows us to perform systematic perturbative approximations. This expansion provides approximate master equations which can feature advantages over existing weak-coupling techniques. As a special case, we derive a Markovian master equation, which is different from existing approaches. We compare our equations with corresponding standard weak-coupling equations by two examples, where our correlation picture formalism is more accurate, or at least as accurate as weak-coupling equations.
We extend the concept of locality to enclose a situation where a tensor-product structure for the Hilbert space is not textit {a priori} assumed; rather, this locality is related to a given matrix representation of the Hamiltonian associated to the s
ystem. As a result, we formulate a Lieb-Robinson-like bound for Hamiltonians local in a given basis. In particular, we employ this bound to obtain alternatively the adiabatic condition, where adiabaticity is naturally ensued from a locality in energy basis and a relatively small Lieb-Robinson bound.
