Rotation of Bloch sphere induced by Lamb shift in open two-level systems**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11275064 and 11075050), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education, China (Grant No. 20124306110003), the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University, China (Grant No. IRT0964), and the Construct Program

Abstract

From a quite general form of the Lindblad-like master equation of open two-level systems (qubits), we study the effect of Lamb shift on the non-Markovian dynamics. We find that the Lamb shift can induce a non-uniform rotation of the Bloch sphere, but that it does not affect the non-Markovianity of the open system dynamics. We determine the optimal initial-state pairs that maximize the backflow of information for the considered master equation and find an interesting phenomenon–the sudden change of the non-Markovianity. We relate the dynamics to the evolution of the Bloch sphere to help us comprehend the obtained results.