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 re
servoir. 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.
Irreversibility is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. While microscopic physical laws are perfectly reversible, macroscopic average behavior has a preferred direction of time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, this arrow of
time is associated with a positive mean entropy production. Using a nuclear magnetic resonance setup, we measure the nonequilibrium entropy produced in an isolated spin-1/2 system following fast quenches of an external magnetic field and experimentally demonstrate that it is equal to the entropic distance, expressed by the Kullback-Leibler divergence, between a microscopic process and its time-reverse. Our result addresses the concept of irreversibility from a microscopic quantum standpoint.
We describe an apparatus designed to make non-demolition measurements on a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped in a double-well optical cavity. This apparatus contains, as well as the bosonic gas and the trap, an optical cavity. We show how the in
teraction between the light and the atoms, under appropriate conditions, can allow for a weakly disturbing yet highly precise measurement of the population imbalance between the two wells and its variance. We show that the setting is well suited for the implementation of quantum-limited estimation strategies for the inference of the key parameters defining the evolution of the atomic system and based on measurements performed on the cavity field. This would enable {it de facto} Hamiltonian diagnosis via a highly controllable quantum probe.
Research on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of quantum systems has so far produced important statements on the thermodynamics of small systems undergoing quantum mechanical evolutions. Key examples are provided by the Crooks and Jarzynski relations:
taking into account fluctuations in non-equilibrium dynamics, such relations connect equilibrium properties of thermodynamical relevance with explicit non-equilibrium features. Although the experimental verification of such fundamental relations in the classical domain has encountered some success, their quantum mechanical version requires the assessment of the statistics of work performed by or onto an evolving quantum system, a step that has so far encountered considerable difficulties in its implementation due to the practical difficulty to perform reliable projective measurements of instantaneous energy states. In this paper, by exploiting a radical change in the characterization of the work distribution at the quantum level, we report the first experimental verification of the quantum Jarzynski identity and the Tasaki-Crooks relation following a quantum process implemented in a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) system. Our experimental approach has enabled the full characterisation of the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a quantum spin in a statistically significant way, thus embodying a key step towards the grounding of quantum-systems thermodynamics.
We extend the concept of superadiabatic dynamics, or transitionless quantum driving, to quantum open systems whose evolution is governed by a master equation in the Lindblad form. We provide the general framework needed to determine the control strat
egy required to achieve superadiabaticity. We apply our formalism to two examples consisting of a two-level system coupled to environments with time-dependent bath operators.
The information encoded in a quantum system is generally spoiled by the influences of its environment, leading to a transition from pure to mixed states. Reducing the mixedness of a state is a fundamental step in the quest for a feasible implementati
on of quantum technologies. Here we show that it is impossible to transfer part of such mixedness to a trash system without losing some of the initial information. Such loss is lower-bounded by a value determined by the properties of the initial state to purify. We discuss this interesting phenomenon and its consequences for general quantum information theory, linking it to the information theoretical primitive embodied by the quantum state-merging protocol and to the behaviour of general quantum correlations.
Many-electron systems confined to a quasi-1D geometry by a cylindrical distribution of positive charge have been investigated by density functional computations in the unrestricted local spin density approximation. Our investigations have been focuse
d on the low density regime, in which electrons are localised. The results reveal a wide variety of different charge and spin configurations, including linear and zig-zag chains, single and double-strand helices, and twisted chains of dimers. The spin-spin coupling turns from weakly anti-ferromagnetic at relatively high density, to weakly ferromagnetic at the lowest densities considered in our computations. The stability of linear chains of localised charge has been investigated by analysing the radial dependence of the self-consistent potential and by computing the dispersion relation of low-energy harmonic excitations.
We study state engineering through bilinear interactions between two remote qubits and two-mode Gaussian light fields. The attainable two-qubit states span the entire physically allowed region in the entanglement-versus-global-purity plane. Two-mode
Gaussian states with maximal entanglement at fixed global and marginal entropies produce maximally entangled two-qubit states in the corresponding entropic diagram. We show that a small set of parameters characterizing extremally entangled two-mode Gaussian states is sufficient to control the engineering of extremally entangled two-qubit states, which can be realized in realistic matter-light scenarios.
We study the dynamical behavior of two initially entangled qubits, each locally coupled to an environment embodied by an interacting spin chain. We consider energy-exchange qubit-environment couplings resulting in a rich and highly non trivial entang
lement dynamics. We obtain exact results for the time-evolution of the concurrence between the two qubits and find that, by tuning the interaction parameters, one can freeze the dynamics of entanglement, therefore inhibiting its relaxation into the spin environments, as well as activate a sudden-death phenomenon. We also discuss the effects of an environmental quantum phase transition on the features of the two-qubit entanglement dynamics.
