Information flow, non-Markovianity, and geometric phases

Abstract

Geometric phases and information flows of a two-level system coupled to its environment are calculated and analyzed. The information flow is defined as a cumulant of changes in trace distance between two quantum states, which is similar to the measure for non-Markovianity given by Breuer. We obtain an analytic relation between the geometric phase and the information flow for pure initial states, and a numerical result for mixed initial states. The geometric phase behaves differently depending on whether there are information flows back to the two-level system from its environment.