Quantum State Diffusion Research Articles

Memory effects in a sequence of measurements of noncommuting observables

We use continuous, stochastic quantum trajectories within a framework of quantum state diffusion (QSD) to describe alternating measurements of two noncommuting observables. Projective measurement of an observable completely destroys memory of the outcome of a previous measurement of the conjugate observable. In contrast, measurement under QSD is not projective and it is possible to vary the rate at which information about previous measurement outcomes is lost by changing the strength of measurement. We apply our methods to a spin 1/2 system and a spin 1 system undergoing alternating measurements of the Sz and Sx spin observables. Performing strong Sz measurements and weak Sx measurements on the spin 1 system, we demonstrate return to the same eigenstate of Sz to a degree beyond that expected from projective measurements and the Born rule. Such a memory effect appears to be greater for return to the ±1 eigenstates than the 0 eigenstate. Furthermore, the spin 1 system follows a measurement cascade process where an initial superposition of the three eigenstates of the observable evolves into a superposition of just two, before finally collapsing into a single eigenstate, giving rise to a distinctive pattern of evolution of the spin components. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Vibration assisted electron tunnelling in COVID-19 infection using quantum state diffusion.

The spread of the COVID-19 virus has become a global health crisis, and finding effective treatments and preventions is a top priority. The field of quantum biology primarily focuses on energy or charge transfer, with a particular emphasis on photosynthesis. However, there is evidence to suggest that cellular receptors such as olfactory or neural receptors may also use vibration-assisted electron tunnelling to enhance their functions. Quantum tunnelling has also been observed in enzyme activity, which is relevant to the invasion of host cells by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Additionally, COVID-19 appears to disrupt receptors such as olfactory receptors. These findings suggest that quantum effects could provide new insights into the mechanisms of biological systems and disease, including potential treatments for COVID-19. We have applied the open quantum system approach using Quantum State Diffusion to solve the non-linear stochastic Schrödinger equation (SSE) for COVID-19 virus infection. Our model includes the mechanism when the spike protein of the virus binds with an ACE2 receptor is considered as dimer. These two entities form a system and then coupled with the cell membrane, which is modelled as a set of harmonic oscillators (bath). By simulating the SSE, we find that there is vibration-assisted electron tunnelling happening in certain biological parameters and coupling regimes. Furthermore, our model contributes to the ongoing research to understand the fundamental nature of virus dynamics. It proposes that vibration-assisted electron tunneling could be a molecular phenomenon that augments the lock-and-key process for olfaction. This insight may enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanisms governing virus-receptor interactions and could potentially lead to the development of novel therapeutic strategies.

Stochastic quantum trajectories demonstrate the quantum Zeno effect in open spin 1/2, spin 1 and spin 3/2 systems

We investigate the quantum Zeno effect (QZE) in spin 1/2, spin 1 and spin 3/2 open quantum systems undergoing Rabi oscillations, revealing unexplored features for the spin 1 and spin 3/2 systems. The systems interact with an environment designed to perform continuous measurements of an observable, driving the systems stochastically towards one of the eigenstates of the corresponding operator. The system-environment coupling constant represents the strength of the measurement. Stochastic quantum trajectories are generated by unravelling a Markovian Lindblad master equation using the quantum state diffusion formalism. These are regarded as a more appropriate representation of system behaviour than consideration of the averaged evolution since the latter can mask the effect of measurement. Complete positivity is maintained and thus the trajectories can be considered as physically meaningful. The QZE is investigated over a range of measurement strengths. Increasing the strength leads to greater system dwell in the vicinity of the eigenstates of the measured observable and lengthens the time taken by the system to return to that eigenstate, thus the QZE emerges. For very strong measurement, the Rabi oscillations resemble randomly occurring near-instantaneous jumps between eigenstates. The trajectories followed by the quantum system are heavily dependent on the measurement strength which other than slowing down and adding noise to the Rabi oscillations, changes the paths taken in spin phase space from a circular precession into elaborate figures-of-eight. For spin 1 and spin 3/2 systems, the measurement strength determines which eigenstates are explored and the QZE is stronger when the system dwells in the vicinity of certain eigenstates compared to others.

Variational Quantum Simulation of Lindblad Dynamics via Quantum State Diffusion.

Quantum simulation of dynamics in open quantum systems is crucial but poses a significant challenge due to the non-Hermitian nature leading to nonunitary evolution and the limited quantum resources on current quantum computers. Here we introduce a variational hybrid quantum-classical algorithm designed for simulating the time evolution governed by the Lindblad master equation. Our approach involves on a stochastic unveiling of the density matrix, transforming the Lindblad equation into a wave function-based quantum state diffusion (QSD) method with the aim of reducing qubit requirements. We then apply variational quantum simulation (VQS) to efficiently capture the nonunitary evolution in QSD. We demonstrate our QSD-VQS algorithm by investigating the quantum dynamics in a two-level system subjected to an amplitude damping channel and a four-level transverse field Ising model within a dissipative environment including time-independent and periodic Hamiltonian cases. The results reveal its promising utility with upcoming hardware in the near future.

Weak second-order quantum state diffusion unraveling of the Lindblad master equation

Simulating mixed-state evolution in open quantum systems is crucial for various chemical physics, quantum optics, and computer science applications. These simulations typically follow the Lindblad master equation dynamics. An alternative approach known as quantum state diffusion unraveling is based on the trajectories of pure states generated by random wave functions, which evolve according to a nonlinear Itô–Schrödinger equation (ISE). This study introduces weak first-order and second-order solvers for the ISE based on directly applying the Itô–Taylor expansion with exact derivatives in the interaction picture. We tested the method on free and driven Morse oscillators coupled to a thermal environment and found that both orders allowed practical estimation with a few dozen iterations. The variance was relatively small compared to the linear unraveling and did not grow with time. The second-order solver delivers a much higher accuracy and stability with bigger time steps than the first-order scheme, with a small additional workload. However, the second-order algorithm has quadratic complexity with the number of Lindblad operators as opposed to the linear complexity of the first-order algorithm.

Linear optical properties of organic microcavity polaritons with non-Markovian quantum state diffusion

Abstract Hybridisation of the cavity modes and the excitons to polariton states together with the coupling to the vibrational modes determine the linear optical properties of organic semiconductors in microcavities. In this article we compute the refractive index for such system using the Holstein–Tavis–Cummings model and determine then the linear optical properties using the transfer matrix method. We first extract the parameters for the exciton in our model from fitting to experimentally measured absorption of a 2,7-bis[9,9-di(4-methylphenyl)-fluoren-2-yl]-9,9-di(4-methylphenyl) fluorene (TDAF) molecular thin film. Then we compute the reflectivity of such a thin film in a metal clad microcavity system by including the dispersive microcavity mode to the model. We compute susceptibility of the model systems evolving just a single state vector by using the non-Markovian quantum state diffusion. The computed location and height of the lower and upper polaritons agree with the experiment within the estimated errorbars for small angles ( ≤ 30 ° ) $(\le 30{}^{\circ})$ . For larger angles the location of the polariton resonances are within the estimated error.

Effects of non-Markovian squeezed bath on the dynamics of open systems

Control of the dynamics of an open quantum system is crucial in quantum information processing. Basically there are two ways: one is the control on the system and the other is tuning the bath parameters. In this paper, we use the latter to analyze the non-Markovian dynamics of the open system. The model is that the system is immersed in non-Markovian squeezed baths. For the dynamics, a non-Markovian master equation is obtained using the quantum state diffusion (QSD) equation technique for the weak system–bath couplings. We take the adiabatic evolution or quantum state transmission as examples to analyze the effects of the bath parameters: non-Markovianity γ, the squeezed direction θ and squeezed strength r. For the adiabatic or state transmission fidelity, the calculation results show that they both can be enhanced by a smaller γ or bigger p-quadrature. Interestingly, when 0<θ<π/2, the squeezed quadrature is determined by the combination of r and θ, and by numerical simulation we find that the fidelity peak occurs at r=1−2θ/π. The fidelities increase with increasing r when r∈(0,1−2θ/π]. When θ≥π/2, lower fidelities are obtained due to the squeezed baths. Our results show that the dynamics of the open systems can be effectively controlled by reservoir engineering.

Non-Markovian quantum state diffusion for spin environments

We introduce an exact open system method to describe the dynamics of quantum systems that are strongly coupled to specific types of environments comprising of spins, such as central spin systems. Our theory is similar to the established non-Markovian quantum state diffusion theory, but for a spin bath instead of a Gaussian bath. The method allows us to represent the time-evolved reduced state of the system as an ensemble average of stochastically evolving pure states. We present a comprehensive theory for arbitrary linear spin environments at both zero and finite temperatures. Furthermore, we introduce a hierarchical expansion method that enables the numerical computation of the time evolution of the stochastic pure states, facilitating a numerical solution of the open system problem in relevant strong coupling regimes.

Quantum Information Scrambling in Non-Markovian Open Quantum System.

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of a spin chain whose two end spins interact with two independent non-Markovian baths by using the non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (QSD) equation approach. Specifically, two issues about information scrambling in an open quantum system are addressed. The first issue is that tripartite mutual information (TMI) can quantify information scrambling properly via its negative value in a closed system, whether it is still suitable to indicate information scrambling in an open quantum system. We find that negative TMI is not a suitable quantifier of information scrambling in an open quantum system in some cases, while negative tripartite logarithmic negativity (TLN) is an appropriate one. The second one is that up to now almost all information scrambling in open quantum systems reported were focus on a Markovian environment, while the effect of a non-Markovian environment on information scrambling is still elusive. Our results show that the memory effect of an environment will be beneficial to information scrambling. Moreover, it is found that the environment is generally detrimental for information scrambling in the long-term, while in some cases it will be helpful for information scrambling in the short-term.

Quantum Energy Current Induced Coherence in a Spin Chain under Non-Markovian Environments

We investigate the time-dependent behaviour of the energy current between a quantum spin chain and its surrounding non-Markovian and finite temperature baths, together with its relationship to the coherence dynamics of the system. To be specific, both the system and the baths are assumed to be initially in thermal equilibrium at temperature and , respectively. This model plays a fundamental role in study of quantum system evolution towards thermal equilibrium in an open system. The non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (NMQSD) equation approach is used to calculate the dynamics of the spin chain. The effects of non-Markovianity, temperature difference and system-bath interaction strength on the energy current and the corresponding coherence in cold and warm baths are analyzed, respectively. We show that the strong non-Markovianity, weak system-bath interaction and low temperature difference will help to maintain the system coherence and correspond to a weaker energy current. Interestingly, the warm baths destroy the coherence while the cold baths help to build coherence. Furthermore, the effects of the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya () interaction and the external magnetic field on the energy current and coherence are analyzed. Both energy current and coherence will change due to the increase of the system energy induced by the interaction and magnetic field. Significantly, the minimal coherence corresponds to the critical magnetic field which causes the first order phase transition.

Calculating nonlinear response functions for multidimensional electronic spectroscopy using dyadic non-Markovian quantum state diffusion.

We present a methodology for simulating multidimensional electronic spectra of molecular aggregates with coupling of electronic excitation to a structured environment using the stochastic non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (NMQSD) method in combination with perturbation theory for the response functions. A crucial aspect of our approach is that we propagate the NMQSD equation in a doubled system Hilbert space but with the same noise. We demonstrate that our approach shows fast convergence with respect to the number of stochastic trajectories, providing a promising technique for numerical calculation of two-dimensional electronic spectra of large molecular aggregates.

Effects of Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-Wohlman-Aharony interactions on the non-markovian dynamics of quantum entanglement and communication

By using the non-Markovian Quantum State Diffusion method, the non-Markovian dynamics of entanglement, quantum dense coding and quantum teleportation in the spin chain system with Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-wohlman-Aharony interactions and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya in- teractions are studied. In particular, the joint effects of Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-wohlman-Aharony interactions and different external magnetic fields are discussed under zero and finite temperatures, respectively. The results show that the concurrence, channel capacity of quantum dense coding and average fidelity of quantum teleportation can be effectively increased via the increasing of Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-wohlman-Aharony interactions along the z-direction which can be attributed to the constructive role of Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-wohlman-Aharony interactions on the O(3) invariance in the spin chain. Non-uniform magnetic fields with the combination of Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-wohlman-Aharony interactions are found to be more effective in the increasing of the parameters under discussion.

Nonequilibrium quantum thermodynamics in non-Markovian adiabatic speedup

Understanding heat transfer between a quantum system and its environment is of undisputed importance if reliable quantum devices are to be constructed. Here, we investigate the heat transfer between system and bath in non-Markovian open systems in the process of adiabatic speedup. Using the quantum state diffusion equation method, the heat current, energy current, and power are calculated during free evolution and under external control of the system. While the heat current increases with increasing system–bath coupling strength and bath temperature, it can be restricted by the non-Markovian nature of the bath. Without pulse control, the heat current is nearly equal to the energy current. On the other hand, with pulse control, the energy current turns out to be nearly equal to the power. In this scenario, we show that non-Markovianity is a useful tool to drive the system through an approximate adiabatic dynamics, with pulse control acting in the conversion between heat current and power throughout the evolution.

Many-Body Quantum State Diffusion for Non-Markovian Dynamics in Strongly Interacting Systems.

Capturing non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems is generally a challenging problem, especially for strongly interacting many-body systems. In this Letter, we combine recently developed non-Markovian quantum state diffusion techniques with tensor network methods to address this challenge. As a first example, we explore a Hubbard-Holstein model with dissipative phonon modes, where this new approach allows us to quantitatively assess how correlations spread in the presence of non-Markovian dissipation in a 1D many-body system. We find regimes where correlation growth can be enhanced by these effects, offering new routes for dissipatively enhancing transport and correlation spreading, relevant for both solid state and cold atom experiments.

Non-Markovian Dynamics of Geometric Quantum Discord in a Double Quantum Dot System

In this paper, we study the geometric quantum discord dynamics of the double quantum dot charge qubit in the non-Markovian environment. We apply the non-perturbative non-Markovian quantum state diffusion method to obtain the exact master equation of the double quantum dot system coupled to two independent non-zero temperature electronic baths. Then, we use this master equation to investigate the effects of non-Markovianity, inter-dot coupling strength and bath temperature on the dynamics of geometric quantum discord. Our studies show that the geometric quantum discord of a double quantum dot system can be modified and enhanced in some cases via these factors.

Dephasing versus collapse: lessons from the tight-binding model with noise

Condensed matter physics at room temperature usually assumes that electrons in conductors can be described as spatially narrow wave packets—in contrast to what the Schrödinger equation would predict. How a finite-temperature environment can localize wave functions is still being debated. Here, we represent the environment by a fluctuating potential and investigate different unravellings of the Lindblad equation that describes the one-dimensional tight-binding model in the presence of such a potential. While all unravellings show a fast loss of phase coherence, only part of them lead to narrow wave packets, among them the quantum-state diffusion unravelling. Surprisingly, the decrease of the wave packet width for the quantum state diffusion model with increasing noise strength is slower than that of the phase coherence length. In addition to presenting analytical and numerical results, we also provide phenomenological explanations for them. We conclude that as long as no feedback between the wave function and the environment is taken into account, there will be no unique description of an open quantum system in terms of wave functions. We consider this to be an obstacle to understanding the quantum-classical transition.

Quantum-state diffusion: Application to Bayesian hierarchical modeling

The geometrical interpretation of density operators for open quantum system is investigated. After the discussion of stochastic mapping and the purifying lifts of curves of density matrices, the quantum analog of the classical recipe for the construction of an infinitesimal generator has been established. Despite the main contribution of the present paper in providing the formal expression of such generator, a simple experimental realization of a geometrically intuitive approach to variational inference also established. Nonetheless, the numerical results given here are competitive with those from the other methods used for quantum and classical systems and provide insight into the origin of properties of open quantum systems.

Large Deviations at Level 2.5 for Markovian Open Quantum Systems: Quantum Jumps and Quantum State Diffusion

We consider quantum stochastic processes and discuss a level 2.5 large deviation formalism providing an explicit and complete characterisation of fluctuations of time-averaged quantities, in the large-time limit. We analyse two classes of quantum stochastic dynamics, within this framework. The first class consists of the quantum jump trajectories related to photon detection; the second is quantum state diffusion related to homodyne detection. For both processes, we present the level 2.5 functional starting from the corresponding quantum stochastic Schrödinger equation and we discuss connections of these functionals to optimal control theory.

Measurement-induced entanglement transitions in the quantum Ising chain: From infinite to zero clicks

We investigate measurement-induced phase transitions in the Quantum Ising chain coupled to a monitoring environment. We compare two different limits of the measurement problem, the stochastic quantum-state diffusion protocol corresponding to infinite small jumps per unit of time and the no-click limit, corresponding to post-selection and described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. In both cases we find a remarkably similar phenomenology as the measurement strength $\gamma$ is increased, namely a sharp transition from a critical phase with logarithmic scaling of the entanglement to an area-law phase, which occurs at the same value of the measurement rate in the two protocols. An effective central charge, extracted from the logarithmic scaling of the entanglement, vanishes continuously at the common transition point, although with different critical behavior possibly suggesting different universality classes for the two protocols. We interpret the central charge mismatch near the transition in terms of noise-induced disentanglement, as suggested by the entanglement statistics which displays emergent bimodality upon approaching the critical point. The non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and its associated subradiance spectral transition provide a natural framework to understand both the extended critical phase, emerging here for a model which lacks any continuous symmetry, and the entanglement transition into the area law.

Quantum state transmission through a spin chain in finite-temperature heat baths

Transmission of a quantum state is essential for performing quantum information processing tasks. The communication channel will be inevitably immersed in its surrounding environment under realistic conditions. In this paper, we investigate the influence of environment noise on the transmission fidelity when transferring a quantum state through a spin chain. The non-Markovian open system dynamics is systematically analyzed by using the quantum state diffusion equation method. With each spin immersed in its own finite temperature and non-Markovian heat bath, we consider three types of system–bath interaction: dephasing, dissipation and spin-boson. The transmission fidelity is found to decrease with the increasing bath temperature and system–bath coupling strength. Interestingly, we find that the bath non-Markovianity can help enhancing the transmission fidelity.