Full Master Equation Research Articles

Ultrafast superconducting qubit readout with the quarton coupler.

Fast, high-fidelity, and quantum nondemolition (QND) qubit readout is an essential element of quantum information processing. For superconducting qubits, state-of-the-art readout is based on a dispersive cross-Kerr coupling between a qubit and its readout resonator. The resulting readout can be high fidelity and QND, but readout times are currently limited to the order of 50 nanoseconds due to the dispersive cross-Kerr of magnitude 10 megahertz. Here, we present a readout scheme that uses the quarton coupler to facilitate a large (greater than 200 megahertz) cross-Kerr between a transmon qubit and its readout resonator. Full master equation simulations of the coupled system show a 5-nanosecond readout time with greater than 99% readout fidelity and greater than 99.9% QND fidelity. The quartonic readout circuit is experimentally feasible and preserves the coherence properties of the qubit. Our work reveals a path for order of magnitude improvements of superconducting qubit readout by engineering nonlinear light-matter couplings in parameter regimes unreachable by existing designs.

Quantum Trajectories for Time-Local Non-Lindblad Master Equations.

For the efficient simulation of open quantum systems, we often use quantum jump trajectories given by pure states that evolve stochastically to unravel the dynamics of the underlying master equation. In the Markovian regime, when the dynamics is described by a Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad (GKSL) master equation, this procedure is known as MonteCarlo wave function approach. However, beyond ultraweak system-bath coupling, the dynamics of the system is not described by an equation of GKSL type, but rather by the Redfield equation, which can be brought into pseudo-Lindblad form. Here, negative dissipation strengths prohibit the conventional approach. To overcome this problem, we propose a pseudo-Lindblad quantum trajectory (PLQT) unraveling. It does not require an effective extension of the state space, like other approaches, except for the addition of a single classical bit. We test the PLQT for the eternal non-Markovian master equation for a single qubit and an interacting Fermi-Hubbard chain coupled to a thermal bath and discuss its computational effort compared to solving the full master equation.

All-optical polarization-state engineering in quantum cavity optomagnonics

We theoretically propose an optical polarization-state engineering based on a cavity optomagnonic platform in the full quantum regime. Here, the optomagnonic interaction can be realized in an yttrium iron garnet (YIG) sphere, which supports both two traveling-photon modes with orthogonal linear polarizations [i.e., horizontally ($H$-) and vertically ($V$-) polarized photon modes] and a Kittel magnon mode. In our scheme, the magnons mediate the photons during polarization conversions, and break the time-reversal symmetry in mutual interconversions. Through a triple resonance between the magnon mode, $H$-polarized, and $V$-polarized photon modes within the YIG optomagnonic cavity, we demonstrate an all-optical scheme to manipulate the optical polarization behaviors by adjusting an external driving laser, finding that the polarization states of the output light can be well mapped to the whole Poincar\'e sphere and a large polarization rotation of the output light with photon antibunching and superbunching can be achieved easily for a range of realistic parameters. We find the strong discrepancy in the polarization response between the exact numerical calculation using the full quantum master equation and the semiclassical approximation. In addition, we reveal the magnon-induced broken time-reversal symmetry, which connects the quantum cavity optomagnonics to the classical magneto-optical effect. Our obtained results have potential application in quantum polarization-state engineering, and also offer a further understanding for cavity optomagnonics at the quantum level.

Liouvillian skin effect in an exactly solvable model

The interplay between dissipation, topology and sensitivity to boundary conditions has recently attracted tremendous amounts of attention at the level of effective non-Hermitian descriptions. Here we exactly solve a quantum mechanical Lindblad master equation describing a dissipative topological Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) chain of fermions for both open boundary condition (OBC) and periodic boundary condition (PBC). We find that the extreme sensitivity on the boundary conditions associated with the non-Hermitian skin effect is directly reflected in the rapidities governing the time evolution of the density matrix giving rise to a Liouvillian skin effect. This leads to several intriguing phenomena including boundary sensitive damping behavior, steady state currents in finite periodic systems, and diverging relaxation times in the limit of large systems. We illuminate how the role of topology in these systems differs in the effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian limit and the full master equation framework.

Quantum Fisher information perspective on sensing in anti-PT symmetric systems

The efficient sensing of weak environmental perturbations via special degeneracies called exceptional points in non-Hermitian systems has attracted enormous attention in the last few decades. However, in contrast to the extensive literature on parity-time (PT) symmetric systems, the exotic hallmarks of anti-PT symmetric systems are only beginning to be realized now. Very recently, a characteristic resonance of vanishing linewidth in anti-PT symmetric systems was shown to exhibit tremendous sensitivity to intrinsic nonlinearities. Given the primacy of sensing in non-Hermitian systems, in general, and the immense topicality of anti-PT symmetry, we investigate the statistical bound to the measurement sensitivity for any arbitrary perturbation in a dissipatively coupled, anti-PT symmetric system. Using the framework of quantum Fisher information and the long-time solution to the full master equation, we analytically compute the Cram\'er-Rao bound for the system properties such as the detunings and the couplings. As an illustrative example of this formulation, we inspect and reaffirm the role of a long-lived resonance in dissipatively interacting systems for sensing applications.

Intrinsic mechanisms for drive-dependent Purcell decay in superconducting quantum circuits

We develop a new approach to understanding intrinsic mechanisms that cause the $T_1$-decay rate of a multi-level superconducting qubit to depend on the photonic population of a coupled, detuned cavity. Our method yields simple analytic expressions for both the coherently driven or thermally excited cases which are in good agreement with full master equation numerics, and also facilitates direct physical intuition. It also predicts several new phenomena. In particular, we find that in a wide range of settings, the cavity-qubit detuning controls whether a non-zero photonic population increases or decreases qubit Purcell decay. Our method combines insights from a Keldysh treatment of the system, and Lindblad perturbation theory.

Spectral Green's-function method in driven open quantum dynamics

A novel method based on spectral Green functions is presented for the simulation of driven open quantum dynamics that can be described by the Lindblad master equation in Liouville density operator space. The method extends the Hilbert space formalism and provides simple algebraic connections between the driven and non-driven dynamics in the spectral frequency domain. The formalism shows remarkable analogies to the use of Green functions in quantum field theory such as the elementary excitation energies and the Dyson self-energy equation. To demonstrate its potential, we apply the novel method to a coherently driven dissipative ensemble of 2-level systems comprising a single "active" subsystem interacting with $N$ "passive" subsystems -- a generic model with important applications in quantum optics and dynamic nuclear polarization. The novel method dramatically reduces computational cost compared with simulations based on solving the full master equation, thus making it possible to study and optimize many-body correlated states in the physically realistic limit of an arbitrarily large $N$.

Strongly correlated photons with quantum feedback in a cascaded nanoscale double-cavity system

We characterize via the second-order correlation function the quantum correlations in the transmitted light in a two-cascaded-cavities system side-coupled to a common waveguide via bidirectional propagation. Adopting a full quantum master equation and standard input-output theory, we calculate the zero-time-delay second-order correlation function and identify clearly distinguished parameter regimes with the photon bunching and antibunching. Our numerical results clearly show that strong photon antibunching can be achieved in the cascaded double-cavity system without the need for extra modal-overlap-based coupling between the two cavities. Remarkably, this strong photon antibunching appears in the weak-coupling regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics. The photon antibunching properties can be manipulated by adjusting the propagation phase. In addition, we discuss the influences of the emitter-to-cavity coupling strength and the waveguide-to-cavity coupling rate on the photon antibunching. Also, the experimental feasibility of our proposal with the current photonic crystal technique is analyzed. This study offers an alternative way to generate the strongly antibunched photons, which may have applications in on-chip quantum information processing.

Light dressing of a diatomic superconducting artificial molecule

In this work, we irradiate a superconducting artificial molecule composed of two coupled tunable transmons with microwave light while monitoring its state via joint dispersive readout. Performing high-power spectroscopy, we observe and identify a variety of single- and multiphoton transitions. We also find that at certain fluxes, the measured spectrum of the system deviates significantly from the solution of the stationary Schr\"odinger equation with no driving. We reproduce these unusual spectral features by solving numerically the full master equation for a steady-state and attribute them to an Autler-Townes-like effect in which a single tone is simultaneously dressing the system and probing the transitions between new eigenstates. We show that it is possible to find analytically the exact frequencies at which the satellite spectral lines appear by solving self-consistent equations in the rotating frame. Our approach agrees well with both the experiment and the numerical simulation.

Reduction of frequency-dependent light shifts in light-narrowing regimes: A study using effective master equations

Alkali-metal-vapor magnetometers, using coherent precession of polarized atomic spins for magnetic-field measurement, have become one of the most sensitive magnetic-field detectors. Their application areas range from practical uses such as NMR signal detection to fundamental physics research such as searches for permanent electric dipole moments. One of the main noise sources of atomic magnetometers comes from the light shift that depends on the frequency of the pump laser. In this work, we theoretically study the light shift, taking into account the relaxation due to the optical pumping and the collision between alkali-metal atoms and between alkali-metal atoms and the buffer gas. Starting from a full master equation containing both the ground and excited states, we adiabatically eliminate the excited states and obtain an effective master equation in the ground-state subspace that shows an intuitive picture and dramatically accelerates the numerical simulation. Solving this effective master equation, we find that in the light-narrowing regime, where the linewidth is reduced while the coherent precession signal is enhanced, the frequency dependence of the light shift is largely reduced, which agrees with experimental observations in cesium magnetometers. Since this effective master equation is general and is easily solved, it can be applied to an extensive parameter regime, and also to study other physical problems in alkali-metal-vapor magnetometers, such as heading errors.

Thermalization in the quantum Ising model—approximations, limits, and beyond

We present quantitative predictions for quantum simulator experiments on Ising models from trapped ions to Rydberg chains and show how the thermalization, and thus decoherence times, can be controlled by considering common, independent, and end-cap couplings to the bath. We find (i) independent baths enable more rapid thermalization in comparison to a common one; (ii) the thermalization timescale depends strongly on the position in the Ising phase diagram; (iii) for a common bath larger system sizes show a significant slow down in the thermalization process; and (iv) finite-size scaling indicates a subradiance effect slowing thermalization rates toward the infinite spin chain limit. We find it is necessary to treat the full multi-channel Lindblad master equation rather than the commonly used single-channel local Lindblad approximation to make accurate predictions on a classical computer. This method reduces the number of qubits one can practically classical simulate by at least a factor of 4, in turn showing a quantum advantage for such thermalization problems at a factor of 4 smaller qubit number for open quantum systems as opposed to closed ones. Thus, our results encourage open quantum system exploration in noisy intermediate-scale quantum technologies.

Protecting superconducting qubits from phonon mediated decay

For quantum computing to become fault tolerant, the underlying quantum bits must be effectively isolated from the noisy environment. It is well known that including an electromagnetic bandgap around the qubit operating frequency improves coherence for superconducting circuits. However, investigations of bandgaps to other environmental coupling mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Here, we present a method to enhance the coherence of superconducting circuits by introducing a phononic bandgap around the device operating frequency. The phononic bandgaps block resonant decay of defect states within the gapped frequency range, removing the electromagnetic coupling to phonons at the gap frequencies. We construct a multiscale model that derives the decrease in the density of states due to the bandgap and the resulting increase in defect state T1 times. We demonstrate that emission rates from in-plane defect states can be suppressed by up to two orders of magnitude. We combine these simulations with theory for resonators operating in the continuous-wave regime and show that improvements in quality factors are expected by up to the enhancement in defect T1 times. Furthermore, we use full master equation simulation to demonstrate the suppression of qubit energy relaxation even when interacting with 200 defect states. We conclude with an exploration of device implementation including tradeoffs between fabrication complexity and qubit performance.

The Monte Carlo wave-function method: A robust adaptive algorithm and a study in convergence

We present a stepwise adaptive-timestep version of the Quantum Jump (Monte Carlo wave-function) algorithm. Our method has proved to remain robust even for problems where the integrating implementation of the Quantum Jump method is numerically problematic. The only specific parameter of our algorithm is the single a priory parameter of the Quantum Jump method, the maximal allowed total jump probability per timestep. We study the convergence of ensembles of trajectories to the solution of the full master equation as a function of this parameter. This study is expected to pertain to any possible implementation of the Quantum Jump method.

Marginal process framework: A model reduction tool for Markov jump processes.

Markov jump process models have many applications across science. Often these models are defined on a state space of product form and only one of the components of the process is of direct interest. In this paper we extend the marginal process framework, which provides a marginal description of the component of interest, to the case of fully coupled processes. We use entropic matching to obtain a finite-dimensional approximation of the filtering equation, which governs the transition rates of the marginal process. The resulting equations can be seen as a combination of two projection operations applied to the full master equation so that we obtain a principled model reduction framework. We demonstrate the resulting reduced description on the totally asymmetric exclusion process. An important class of Markov jump processes are stochastic reaction networks, which have applications in chemical and biomolecular kinetics, ecological models, and models of social networks. We obtain a particularly simple instantiation of the marginal process framework for mass-action systems by using product Poisson distributions for the approximate solution of the filtering equation. We investigate the resulting approximate marginal process analytically and numerically.

Dissipative preparation of steady Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states for Rydberg atoms with quantum Zeno dynamics

Inspired by a recent work [Reiter, Reeb, and S{\o}rensen, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf117}, 040501 (2016)], we present a simplified proposal for dissipatively preparing a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state of three Rydberg atoms in a cavity. The $Z$ pumping is implemented under the action of the spontaneous emission of $\Lambda$-type atoms and the quantum Zeno dynamics induced by strong continuous coupling. In the meantime, a dissipative Rydberg pumping breaks up the stability of the state $|{\rm GHZ}_+\rangle$ in the process of $Z$ pumping, making $|{\rm GHZ}_-\rangle$ be the unique steady state of system. Compared with the former scheme, the number of driving fields acting on atoms is greatly reduced and only a single-mode cavity is required. The numerical simulation of the full master equation reveals that a high fidelity $\sim98\%$ can be obtained with the currently achievable parameters in the Rydberg-atom-cavity system.

Laser and cavity cooling of a mechanical resonator with a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond

We theoretically analyse the cooling dynamics of a high-Q mode of a mechanical resonator, when the structure is also an optical cavity and is coupled with a NV center. The NV center is driven by a laser and interacts with the cavity photon field and with the strain field of the mechanical oscillator, while radiation pressure couples mechanical resonator and cavity field. Starting from the full master equation we derive the rate equation for the mechanical resonator's motion, whose coefficients depend on the system parameters and on the noise sources. We then determine the cooling regime, the cooling rate, the asymptotic temperatures, and the spectrum of resonance fluorescence for experimentally relevant parameter regimes. For these parameters, we consider an electronic transition, whose linewidth allows one to perform sideband cooling, and show that the addition of an optical cavity in general does not improve the cooling efficiency. We further show that pure dephasing of the NV center's electronic transitions can lead to an improvement of the cooling efficiency.

Edge-state blockade of transport in quantum dot arrays

We propose a transport blockade mechanism in quantum dot arrays and conducting molecules based on an interplay of Coulomb repulsion and the formation of edge states. As a model we employ a dimer chain that exhibits a topological phase transition. The connection to a strongly biased electron source and drain enables transport. We show that the related emergence of edge states is manifest in the shot noise properties as it is accompanied by a crossover from bunched electron transport to a Poissonian process. For both regions we develop a scenario that can be captured by a rate equation. The resulting analytical expressions for the Fano factor agree well with the numerical solution of a full quantum master equation.

A multi-time-scale analysis of chemical reaction networks: II. Stochastic systems.

We consider stochastic descriptions of chemical reaction networks in which there are both fast and slow reactions, and for which the time scales are widely separated. We develop a computational algorithm that produces the generator of the full chemical master equation for arbitrary systems, and show how to obtain a reduced equation that governs the evolution on the slow time scale. This is done by applying a state space decomposition to the full equation that leads to the reduced dynamics in terms of certain projections and the invariant distributions of the fast system. The rates or propensities of the reduced system are shown to be the rates of the slow reactions conditioned on the expectations of fast steps. We also show that the generator of the reduced system is a Markov generator, and we present an efficient stochastic simulation algorithm for the slow time scale dynamics. We illustrate the numerical accuracy of the approximation by simulating several examples. Graph-theoretic techniques are used throughout to describe the structure of the reaction network and the state-space transitions accessible under the dynamics.

Time evolution of open quantum many-body systems

We establish a generic method to analyze the time evolution of open quantum many-body systems. Our approach is based on a variational integration of the quantum master equation describing the dynamics and naturally connects to a variational principle for its nonequilibrium steady state. We successfully apply our variational method to study dissipative Rydberg gases, finding excellent quantitative agreement with small-scale simulations of the full quantum master equation. We observe that correlations related to non-Markovian behavior play a significant role during the relaxation dynamics towards the steady state. We further quantify this non-Markovianity and find it to be closely connected to an information-theoretical measure of quantum and classical correlations.

Predicting pressure-dependent unimolecular rate constants using variational transition state theory with multidimensional tunneling combined with system-specific quantum RRK theory: a definitive test for fluoroform dissociation.

Understanding the falloff in rate constants of gas-phase unimolecular reaction rate constants as the pressure is lowered is a fundamental problem in chemical kinetics, with practical importance for combustion, atmospheric chemistry, and essentially all gas-phase reaction mechanisms. In the present work, we use our recently developed system-specific quantum RRK theory, calibrated by canonical variational transition state theory with small-curvature tunneling, combined with the Lindemann-Hinshelwood mechanism, to model the dissociation reaction of fluoroform (CHF3), which provides a definitive test for falloff modeling. Our predicted pressure-dependent thermal rate constants are in excellent agreement with experimental values over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. The present validation of our methodology, which is able to include variational transition state effects, multidimensional tunneling based on the directly calculated potential energy surface along the tunneling path, and torsional and other vibrational anharmonicity, together with state-of-the-art reaction-path-based direct dynamics calculations, is important because the method is less empirical than models routinely used for generating full mechanisms, while also being simpler in key respects than full master equation treatments and the full reduced falloff curve and modified strong collision methods of Troe.