Suppression of decoherence by multiple joint measurements in entangled systems

Since there are many examples in which no decoherence-free subsystems exist (among them all cases where the error generators act irreducibly on the system Hilbert space), it is of interest to search for novel mechanisms which suppress decoherence in these more general cases. Drawing on recent work (quant-ph/0502153) we present three results which indicate decoherence suppression without the need for noiseless subsystems. There is a certain trade-off; our results do not necessarily apply to an arbitrary initial density matrix or for completely generic noise parameters. On the other hand, our computational methods are novel and the result---suppression of decoherence in the error-algebra approach without noiseless subsystems---is an interesting new direction.

In this paper, we study the problem of suppressing Decoherence in open finite-dimensional quantum systems by effectively making use of the geometric and structural properties of the open quantum system and the model of the environmental interaction. It is shown that both the geometric properties of the system as well as the structure of decohering environmental interaction play a vital role in successful decoherence suppression. We re-formulate the problem of decoherence suppression as a disturbance rejection scheme, in which the environmental interaction is treated as the quantum disturbance. The conditions for “decouplability” is given along with a detailed constructive algorithm to synthesize the decoupling control of with the help of a scalable ancillary quantum system. This decoherence suppression strategy is demonstrated for a simple 2-qubit system wherein the effects of decoherence are completely eliminated. The theory provides conditions to be imposed on the controller to ensure perfect decoupling.

The Lindblad theory of open quantum systems has been successfully applied in various fields ranging from quantum optics, condensed matter physics, and quantum thermodynamics to quantum chemistry. Nevertheless, there are situations where we can compare its predictions to those of exact methods or numerically exact results and find discrepancies between them. One example is the case where a single harmonic oscillator is coupled to a thermal bath of independent harmonic oscillators. In this case, for certain parameters, the exact master equation describes equilibration of the system to a thermal state with a temperature different from the one predicted by the Lindblad master equation. The Lindblad theory, based on a weak coupling between the system and environment as well as the Born-Markov approximation, predicts that the system will evolve to a thermal state whose temperature is equal to the initial temperature of the bath. This result is a consequence of the Born approximation, which supposes that throughout the evolution, the bath only fluctuates around its initial equilibrium state. In this master thesis we study the validity of the Born approximation as well as its consistency with other approximations. By starting from a Hamiltonian for the total system we show that, if the the Born approximation is not invoked, the dynamics of the system is determined by a hierarchy of equations for matrices which can be used to reconstruct the reduced density matrix of the system. This hierarchy approach is fundamentally different from the standard approach, which describes the system dynamics with a weak-coupling master equation, because the hierarchy does not restrict the amount of entanglement possible between the system and the environment. Furthermore, we show how invoking the Born approximation reduces to the usual result and how a generalised ansatz, which we refer to as a generalised Born approximation, reduces the hierarchy to a master equation where the bath temperature is an additional degree of freedom. Finally, we analyse the conservation of the energy of the total system and its relationship to the Markov and secular approximations, and discuss whether imposing it as a condition can fix the time-dependent temperature.

In this paper, we provide a mechanism of decoherence suppression for open quantum systems in general, and that for "Schrodinger cat-like" state in particular, through the strong couplings to non-Markovian reservoirs. Different from the usual strategies of suppressing decoherence by decoupling the system from the environment in the literatures, here the decoherence suppression employs the strong back-reaction from non-Markovian reservoirs. The mechanism relies on the existence of the singularities (bound states) of the nonequilibrium retarded Green function which completely determines the dissipation and decoherence dynamics of open systems. As an application, we examine the decoherence dynamics of a photonic crystal nanocavity that is coupled to a waveguide. The strong non-Markovian suppression of decoherence for the optical cat state is attained.

We consider a finite-dimensional quantum system coupled to a thermal reservoir and subject to a time-periodic, energy conserving forcing. We show that, if a certain dynamical decoupling condition is fulfilled, then the periodic forcing counteracts the decoherence induced by the reservoir: for small system-reservoir coupling $\lambda$ and small forcing period $T$, the system dynamics is approximated by an energy conserving and non-dissipative dynamics, which preserves coherences. For times up to order $(\lambda T)^{-1}$, the difference between the true and approximated dynamics is of size $\lambda +T$. Our approach is rigorous and combines Floquet and spectral deformation theory. We illustrate our results on the spin-fermion model and recover previously known, heuristically obtained results.

A methodology is presented based on wavelet techniques to approximate fast and slow dynamics present in time-series whose behavior is characterized by different local scales in time. These approximations are useful to understand the global dynamics of the original full systems, especially in experimental situations where all information is contained in a one-dimensional time-series. Wavelet analysis is a natural approach to handle these approximations because each dynamical behavior manifests its specific subset in frequency domain, for example, with two time scales, the slow and fast dynamics, present in low and high frequencies, respectively. The proposed procedure is illustrated by the analysis of a complex experimental time-series of iron electrodissolution where the slow chaotic dynamics is interrupted by fast irregular spiking. The method can be used to first filter the time-series data and then separate the fast and slow dynamics even when clear maxima and/or minima in the corresponding global wavelet spectrum are missing. The results could find applications in the analysis of synchronization of complex systems through multi-scale analysis.

It is shown that a nonequilibrium environment can be instrumental in suppressing decoherence between distinct decoherence free subspaces in quantum registers. The effect is found in the framework of exact coherent-product solutions for model registers decohering in a bath of degenerate harmonic modes, through couplings linear in bath coordinates. These solutions represent a natural nonequilibrium extension of the standard solution for a decoupled initial register state and a thermal environment. Under appropriate conditions, the corresponding reduced register distribution can propagate in an unperturbed manner, even in the presence of entanglement between states belonging to distinct decoherence free subspaces, and despite persistent bath entanglement. As a byproduct, we also obtain a refined picture of coherence dynamics under bang-bang decoherence control. In particular, it is shown that each radio-frequency pulse in a typical bang-bang cycle induces a revival of coherence, and that these revivals are exploited in a natural way by the time-symmetrized version of the bang-bang protocol.

All open quantum systems are affected by environmental noises due to their interactions with the external environment and inevitably suffer from decoherence. Hence, it is fundamentally important and necessary to investigate decoherence suppression for open quantum systems via proper control strategies. Inspired by feed-forward control in the classical control theory, this paper proposes a novel decoherence suppression scheme via weak measurement and environment-assisted measurement. We first take the single-qubit system as an example to illustrate steps of the proposed scheme. To be specific, the single-qubit system is transferred to a state that is more robust to environmental noises via pre-weak measurement operators and feed-forward control operators before the decoherence channel, a measurement is performed on the environment coupled to the protected qubit during the decoherence channel, and the initial state is recovered via reversed feed-forward control operators and post-weak measurement operators after the decoherence channel. The optimum post-weak measurement strength is derived by setting the normalized final state equal to the initial state. By considering the optimum post-weak measurement strength, analytical formulas of the total success probability and the total fidelity are deduced. The proposed scheme is applicable for protecting quantum states from arbitrary decoherence channels with at least one invertible Kraus operator although only the amplitude damping channel and the phase damping channel are taken into account. Provided that the decay rate of the amplitude or phase damping channel is completely known, one can always achieve unit fidelity even for heavy damping cases, which is the biggest advantage of the proposed scheme. Influences of several parameters including strengths of weak measurements, the initial state and the decay rate of the decoherence channel on the performance of decoherence suppression are analyzed, and detailed procedures of a single-qubit pure and mixed state protection are presented on the Bloch sphere, respectively. Subsequently, the Kronecker product is employed to construct operators of dimension <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ 2^N \times 2^N$\end{document}</tex-math><alternatives><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="22-20220760_M1.jpg"/><graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="22-20220760_M1.png"/></alternatives></inline-formula>, the proposed scheme is extended to the general <i>N</i>-qubit case, and unified analytical formulas of the total success probability and the total fidelity are deduced. By applying the proposed scheme to the protection of two-qubit entangled states, it is demonstrated that post-weak measurement operators are not necessary sometimes because of the particular structure of two-qubit entangled states. Furthermore, two numerical simulations are designed to enhance the concurrence of two-qubit entangled states and improve the average fidelity of the standard quantum teleportation in a noisy environment. Analytical formulas of the improvement of concurrence and the average teleportation fidelity are deduced, and the superiority of the proposed scheme is highlighted in comparison with unprotected scenarios.

In this paper, we explore the connection between the curvature of the background De Sitter space-time with the spectroscopic study of entanglement of two atoms. Our set up is in the context of an Open Quantum System (OQS), where the two atoms, each having two energy levels and represented by Pauli spin tensor operators projected along any arbitrary direction. The system mimic the role of a pair of freely falling Unruh De-Witt detectors, which are allowed to non-adiabatically interact with a conformally coupled massless probe scalar field which has the role of background thermal bath. The effective dynamics of this combined system takes into account of the non-adiabatic interaction, which is commonly known as the Resonant Casimir Polder Interaction (RCPI) with the thermal bath. Our analysis revels that the RCPI of two stable entangled atoms in the quantum vacuum states in OQS depends on the de Sitter space-time curvature relevant to the temperature of the thermal bath felt by the static observer. We also find that, in OQS, RCPI produces a new significant contribution appearing in the effective Hamiltonian of the total system and thermal bath under consideration. We find that the Lamb shift is characterised by a decreasing inverse square power law behaviour, L^{-2}, when inter atomic Euclidean distance, L, is much larger than a characteristic length scale, k, which is the inverse surface gravity of the background De Sitter space. If the background space time would have been Minkowskian this shift decreases as, L^{-1}, and is independent of temperature. Thus, we establish a connection between the curvature of the De Sitter space-time with the Lamb shift spectroscopy.

Quantum control is responsible for many key problems in quantum information processing, such as decoherence suppression, quantum state engineering and quantum gate, etc. In recent years quantum control has become a major topic in the fields of quantum optics and quantum information. Fast control of the state of quantum system is effective for both decoherence suppression caused by the environment and information processing in quantum state transfer and tracking. Comparing the standard Lyapunov control function with bang-bang Lyapunov control function, we design an optimized quantum Lyapunov control function, and analyse the influence of control laws on population transfer probability and control time contrastively. The simulation results indicate that the optimized quantum Lyapunov control strategy effectively shortens the control time and avoids high-frequency oscillation that occurs in bang-bang Lyapunov control, therefore, strengthens the robustness against external interference.

The no-knowledge quantum feedback was proposed by Szigeti et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 020407 (2014), as a measurement-based feedback protocol for decoherence suppression for an open quantum system. By continuously measuring environmental noises and feeding back controls on the system, the protocol can completely reverse the measurement backaction and therefore suppress the system's decoherence. However, the complete decoherence cancellation was shown only for the instantaneous feedback, which is impractical in real experiments. Therefore, in this work, we generalize the original work and investigate how the decoherence suppression can be degraded with unavoidable delay times, by analyzing non-Markovian average dynamics. We present analytical expressions for the average dynamics and numerically analyze the effects of the delayed feedback for a coherently driven two-level system, coupled to a bosonic bath via a Hermitian coupling operator. We also find that, when the qubit's unitary dynamics does not commute with the measurement and feedback controls, the decoherence rate can be either suppressed or amplified, depending on the delay time.

The coupling among disparate time-scales is ubiquitous in many chemical and biological systems. We have recently investigated the effect of fast and, long-term, slow dynamics in surface processes underlying some electrocatalytic reactions. Herein we report on the effect of temperature on the coupled slow and fast dynamics of a model system, namely the electro-oxidation of formic acid on platinum studied at five temperatures between 5 and 45 °C. The main result was a turning point found at 25 °C, which clearly defines two regions for the temperature dependency on the overall kinetics. In addition, the long-term evolution allowed us to compare reaction steps related to fast and slow evolutions. Results were discussed in terms of the key role of PtO species, which chemically couple slow and fast dynamics. In summary we were able to: (a) identify the competition between two reaction steps as responsible for the occurrence of two temperature domains; (b) compare the relative activation energies of these two steps; and (c) suggest the role of a given reaction step on the period-increasing set of reactions involved in the oscillatory dynamics. The introduced methodology could be applied to other systems to uncover the temperature dependence of complex chemical networks.

We develop a perturbation theory to estimate the finite time corrections around a quasi static trajectory, in which a quantum system is able to equilibrate at each instant with its environment. The results are then applied to non equilibrium thermodynamics, in which context we are able to provide a connection between the irreversible contributions and the microscopic details of the dynamical map generating the evolution. Turning the attention to finite time Carnot engines, we found a universal connection between the spectral density esponent of the hot/cold thermal baths and the efficiency at maximum power, giving also a new interpretation to already known results such as the Curzon-Ahborn and the Schmiedl-Seifert efficiencies.

Precisely characterizing and controlling the dynamics of realistic open quantum systems has emerged in recent years as a key challenge across contemporary quantum sciences and technologies, with implications ranging from physics, chemistry and applied mathematics to quantum information processing (QIP) and quantum engineering. Quantum control theory aims to provide both a general dynamical-system framework and a constructive toolbox to meet this challenge. The purpose of this special issue of Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics is to present a state-of-the-art account of recent advances and current trends in the field, as reflected in two international meetings that were held on the subject over the last summer and which motivated in part the compilation of this volume—the Topical Group: Frontiers in Open Quantum Systems and Quantum Control Theory, held at the Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (ITAMP) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), from 1–14 August 2010, and the Safed Workshop on Quantum Decoherence and Thermodynamics Control, held in Safed (Israel), from 22–27 August 2010.

It is known that a quantum system with finite degrees of freedom can simulate a composite of a system and an environment if the state of the hypothetical environment is randomized by external manipulation. We show theoretically that any phase decoherence phenomena of a single qubit can be simulated with a two-qubit system and demonstrate experimentally two examples: one is phase decoherence of a single qubit in a transmission line, and the other is that in a quantum memory. We perform NMR experiments employing a two-spin molecule and clearly measure decoherence for both cases. We also prove experimentally that the bang-bang control efficiently suppresses decoherence.