Steady-state Entanglement Research Articles

Measuring postquench entanglement entropy through density correlations

Following a sudden change of interactions in an integrable system of one-dimensional fermions, we analyze the dependence of the static structure factor on the observation time after the quantum quench. At small waiting times after the quench, we map the system to noninteracting bosons such that we are able to extract their occupation numbers from the Fourier transform of the density-density correlation function, and use these to compute a bosonic entropy from a diagonal ensemble. By comparing this bosonic entropy with the asymptotic steady-state entanglement entropy per fermion computed with exact diagonalization, we find excellent agreement.Received 8 December 2021Revised 17 March 2022Accepted 22 March 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L022023Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasBosonizationCharge density wavesEntanglement entropyQuantum quenchTechniquesExact diagonalizationLuttinger liquid modelCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied PhysicsQuantum InformationStatistical Physics

Diagnostics of entanglement dynamics in noisy and disordered spin chains via the measurement-induced steady-state entanglement transition

We utilize the concept of a measurement-induced entanglement transition to analyze the interplay and competition of processes that generate and destroy entanglement in a one-dimensional quantum spin chain evolving under a locally noisy and disordered Hamiltonian. We employ continuous measurements of variable strength to induce a transition from volume to area-law scaling of the steady-state entanglement entropy. While static background disorder systematically reduces the critical measurement strength, this critical value depends nonmonotonically on the strength of nonstatic noise. According to the extracted finite-size scaling exponents, the universality class of the transition is independent of the noise and disorder strength. We interpret the results in terms of the effect of static and nonstatic disorder on the intricate dynamics of the entanglement generation rate due to the Hamiltonian in the absence of measurement, which is fully reflected in the behavior of the critical measurement strength. Our results establish a firm connection between this entanglement growth and the steady-state behavior of the measurement-controlled systems, which therefore can serve as a tool to quantify and investigate features of transient entanglement dynamics in complex many-body systems via a steady-state phase transition.

Dissipative optomechanical preparation of non-Gaussian mechanical entanglement

Entanglement had played a crucial role in developing frontier technologies as a critical resource, for instance, in quantum teleportation and quantum sensing schemes. Notably, thanks to the ability to cool down the vibrational modes of mechanical oscillators to its quantum regime, entanglement between mechanical modes and the production of nonclassical mechanical states have emerged as central resources for quantum technological applications. Thus, proposing deterministic schemes to achieve those tasks is of paramount importance. While the dominant scheme for bipartite mechanical entanglement involves Gaussian optomechanical interactions (linearized regime) to generate two-mode squeezed vacuum states, entangling two-modes exploiting the bare non-Gaussian optomechanical interaction (nonlinear strong single-photon regime) remains less covered. This work proposes an on-demand scheme to engineer phononic non-Gaussian bipartite entanglement in the nonlinear regime by exploiting cavity dissipation. Interestingly, our protocol (operating in the resolved sideband and photon blockade regime) renders the possibility of achieving a high degree of steady-state entanglement. We further show that our deterministic scheme is robust in the presence of decoherence and temperature within state-of-the-art optomechanics, along with the required conditions to obtain non-Gaussianity of the achieved bipartite mechanical steady-state.

Conditions for steady-state entanglement of quantum systems in a stationary environment under Markovian dissipation

We study the entanglement dynamics of an open quantum system composed of two identical two-level subsystems in a common stationary environment undergoing Markovian dissipation, with the help of a set of physical parameters defined with the collective transition coefficients of the system. We then systematically investigate the steady-state entanglement of such a system and obtain the necessary and sufficient condition for steady-state entanglement when it is initial-state dependent. We also show in particular conditions for steady-state entanglement in some circumstances and propose in general a conjecture for the necessary and sufficient condition when it is independent of the initial state.

Dissipation-driven entanglement between two microwave fields in a four-mode hybrid cavity optomechanical system.

The generation and manipulation of highly pure and strongly entangled steady state in a quantum system are vital tasks in the standard continuous-variable teleportation protocol. Especially, the manipulation implemented in integrated devices is even more crucial in practical quantum information applications. Here we propose an effective approach for creating steady-state entanglement between two microwave fields in a four-mode hybrid cavity optomechanical system. The entanglement can be achieved by combining the processes of three beam-splitter interactions and two parametric-amplifier interactions. Due to the dissipation-driven and cavity cooling processes, the entanglement obtained can go far beyond the entanglement limit based on coherent parametric coupling. Moreover, our proposal allows the engineered bath to cool both Bogoliubov modes almost simultaneously. In this way, a highly pure and strongly entangled steady state of two microwave modes is obtained. Our finding may be significant for using the hybrid opto-electro-mechanical system fabricated on chips in various quantum tasks, where the strong and pure entanglement is an important resource.

Steady state entanglement behavior between two quantum refrigerators

An entangled steady-state behavior between two quantum thermal refrigeration machines is evaluated. Each machine is made up of three qubits of two-level, where each qubit interacts with its proper reservoir. The coupling between the qubits and the reservoirs is investigated with weak interaction. In addition, thermodynamic quantities such as heat flux are examined as a function of entanglement. The effect of temperature on entanglement is also studied in the cases of resonance and non-resonance. The obtained results show that the steady-state entanglement is more robust in the case of resonance than in the case of non-resonance. However, the maintenance in this case corresponds to the higher cooling power of the machine.

Improving the steady-state coherence and entanglement of two coupled qubits via composite system-reservoir interactions

In this work, we study the improvement of steady-state coherence (SSC) and steady-state entanglement (SSE) of two coupled qubits by means of composite system-reservoir interaction constructed by a linear combination of orthogonal and parallel ones. We show that in the non-equilibrium case, the SSC and SSE can be significantly enhanced by increasing the parallel components of the interaction Hamiltonian between the system of interest and the heat reservoirs. In addition, we find that in the non-equilibrium case, increasing the parallel components can enlarge the temperature (temperature difference) region where the SSC can maintain nonzero values. In the equilibrium situation, however, the SSC and SSE are not affected by the parallel components of the composite system-reservoir interactions.

Qubit–qubit entanglement mediated by epsilon-near-zero waveguide reservoirs

This work investigates qubit entanglement in rolled-up and plasmonic rectangular epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) waveguide reservoirs. We explore the robust entanglement of qubits coupled to these reservoirs using the concurrence metric formalism and the emergence of driven steady-state entanglement under continuous pumping. The results indicate that the proposed rolled-up ENZ waveguide shows a high long-range entanglement of qubits embedded within as compared to the rectangular ENZ waveguide channel.

Nonunitary entanglement dynamics in continuous-variable systems

We construct a random unitary Gaussian circuit for continuous-variable (CV) systems subject to Gaussian measurements. We show that when the measurement rate is nonzero, the steady state entanglement entropy saturates to an area-law scaling. This is different from a many-body qubit system, where a generic entanglement transition is widely expected. Due to the unbounded local Hilbert space, the time scale to destroy entanglement is always much shorter than the one to build it, while a balance could be achieved for a finite local Hilbert space. By the same reasoning, the absence of transition should also hold for other non-unitary Gaussian CV dynamics.

Equivalence of spatial and particle entanglement growth after a quantum quench

We analyze fermions after an interaction quantum quench in one spatial dimension and study the growth of the steady state entanglement entropy density under either a spatial mode or particle bipartition. For integrable lattice models, we find excellent agreement between the increase of spatial and particle entanglement entropy, and for chaotic models, an examination of two further neighbor interaction strengths suggests similar correspondence. This result highlights the generality of the dynamical conversion of entanglement to thermodynamic entropy under time evolution that underlies our current framework of quantum statistical mechanics.

Strain induced coupling and quantum information processing with hexagonal boron nitride quantum emitters

We propose an electromechanical scheme where the electronic degrees of freedom of boron vacancy color centers hosted by a hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) nanoribbon are coupled for quantum information processing. The mutual coupling of color centers is provided via their coupling to the mechanical motion of the ribbon, which in turn stems from the local strain. The coupling strengths are computed by performing ab initio calculations. The density functional theory results for boron vacancy centers on boron nitride monolayers reveal a huge strain susceptibility. In our analysis, we take into account the effect of all flexural modes and show that despite the thermal noise introduced through the vibrations one can achieve steady-state entanglement between two and more number of qubits that survives even at room temperature. Moreover, the entanglement is robust against mis-positioning of the color centers. The effective coupling of color centers is engineered by positioning them in the proper positions. Hence, one is able to tailor stationary graph states. Furthermore, we study the quantum simulation of the Dicke–Ising model and show that the phonon non-equilibrium phase transition occurs even for a finite number of color centers. Given the steady-state nature of the proposed scheme and accessibility of the electronic states through optical fields, our work paves the way for the realization of steady-state quantum information processing with color centers in hBN membranes.

Entanglement instability in the interaction of two qubits with a common non-Markovian environment

In this work we study the steady state entanglement between two qubits interacting asymetrically with a common non-Markovian environment. Depending on the initial two-qubit state, the asymmetry in the couplings between each qubit and the non-Markovian environment may lead to enhanced entanglement in the steady state of the system, measured in terms of the two-qubit concurrence. Our results indicate that, if a qubit-qubit interaction is also present, the two-qubit steady state concurrence is always favored by the symmetric or anti-symmetric coupling configuration. Although finite, the steady concurrence is predicted to be highly unstable in this regime as long as the interaction between the two qubits is larger than the couplings between each qubit and the non-Markovian reservoir.

Entangling magnon and superconducting qubit by using a two-mode squeezed-vacuum microwave field

We propose a scheme to generate entanglement between magnon and superconducting qubit. The macroscopic yttrium–iron–garnet sphere and superconducting qubit are installed in two spatially separated cavities, which are directly driven by a two-mode squeezed-vacuum microwave field. The magnon and cavity 1 are coupled via magnetic dipole interaction and the superconducting qubit and cavity 2 are coupled via electric dipole interaction. We theoretically demonstrate that the magnon–qubit steady-state entanglement can be created by transferring quantum correlations of the two-mode squeezed-vacuum driving field via cavity–magnon and cavity–qubit beam-splitter interactions. The transfer is highly efficient, and the entanglement is robust against temperature in the optimal parameter regimes. We also deduce a new, to the best of our knowledge, mathematical method to analyze the dynamics of the magnon–qubit entanglement and some significant results are obtained. Our scheme can be implemented with experimentally feasible parameters and may provide guidance in designing hybrid quantum networks.

Efficient steady-state-entanglement generation in strongly driven coupled qubits

We report on a mechanism to optimize the generation of steady-state entanglement in a system of coupled qubits driven by microwave fields. Due to the interplay between Landau-Zener-St\"uckerlberg pumping involving three levels and a subsequent fast relaxation channel, which is activated by tuning the qubits-reservoir couplings, a maximally entangled state can be populated. This mechanism does not require from the fine-tuning of multiphoton-resonances but depends on the sign of the qubit-qubit coupling. In particular, we find that by a proper design of the system parameters and the driving protocol, the two-qubits steady-state concurrence can attain values close to 1 in a wide range of driving amplitudes. Our results may be useful to gain further insight into entanglement control and manipulation in dissipative quantum systems exposed to strong driving.

Nearly invariant boundary entanglement in optomechanical systems* *Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11574398, 11904402, 12074433, and 12004430) and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0301903).

In order to understand our previous numerical finding that steady-state entanglement along the instability boundary remains unchanged in a three-mode optomechanical system [Phys. Rev. A 101 023838 (2020)], we investigate in detail the boundary entanglement in a simpler two-mode optomechanical system. Studies show that both the mechanism to generate entanglement and the parameter dependence of boundary entanglement are quite similar in these two models. Therefore, the two-mode system has captured the main features in the three-mode system. With the help of analytical calculations and discussing in a much bigger parameter interval, we find that the unchanging behavior previously discovered is actually an extremely slow changing behavior of the boundary entanglement function, and most importantly, this nearly invariant boundary entanglement is a general phenomenon via parametric down conversion process in the weak dissipation regime. This is by itself interesting as threshold quantum signatures in optomechanical phonon lasers, or may have potential value in related applications based on boundary quantum properties.

Disorder in dissipation-induced topological states: Evidence for a different type of localization transition

The quest for nonequilibrium quantum phase transitions is often hampered by the tendency of driving and dissipation to give rise to an effective temperature, resulting in classical behavior. Could this be different when the dissipation is engineered to drive the system into a nontrivial quantum coherent steady state? In this work we shed light on this issue by studying the effect of disorder on recently-introduced dissipation-induced Chern topological states, and examining the eigenmodes of the Hermitian steady state density matrix or entanglement Hamiltonian. We find that, similarly to equilibrium, each Landau band has a single delocalized level near its center. However, using three different finite size scaling methods we show that the critical exponent $\nu$ describing the divergence of the localization length upon approaching the delocalized state is significantly different from equilibrium if disorder is introduced into the non-dissipative part of the dynamics. This indicates a different type of nonequilibrium quantum critical universality class accessible in cold-atom experiments.

Time-invariant discord and steady-state entanglement in engineered non-equilibrium dephasing environments

We study theoretically the dynamics of quantum and classical correlations in the two-qubit system, locally experiencing a one-sided engineered pure dephasing non-equilibrium environment with an Ohmic class spectrum. The environmental non-equilibrium nature is characterized by random perturbations with non-stationary statistics. Particularly, we investigate the influence of the non-equilibrium feature on the protection of these correlations and, more specifically, its effect on the non-trivial phenomenon of time-invariant discord. Remarkably, we show that in the presence of this engineered non-equilibrium environment, time-invariant discord with a significantly larger magnitude exists for all Ohmic spectral densities, i.e., sub-Ohmic, Ohmic, and super-Ohmic without zero-temperature restriction. Additionally, we also show that our engineered non-equilibrium model provides a promising tool for trapping entanglement in a steady-state with a higher magnitude. Moreover, our proposed model also renders new insights for controlling decoherence through engineering the relative initial phases of the bath modes without performing any artificial operations on the main quantum system.

Entanglement generation and protection for two atoms in the presence of two parallel mirrors

We study, in the framework of open quantum systems, the entanglement generation of two atoms in between two parallel mirrors in a thermal bath of quantum scalar fields. We find that the presence of mirrors plays an important role in entanglement generation and protection. The entanglement dynamics is crucially dependent on the geometric configurations of the two-atom system with respect to the mirrors, and the ranges of temperature and interatomic separation within which entanglement can be generated are significantly changed compared with those in a free space. In particular, when the atomic transition wavelength is larger than twice the distance between the two mirrors, the atoms behave as if they were isolated from the environment and the entanglement can persist in the steady state if the atoms are initially entangled and no entanglement can be created if they are initially separable, no matter how the atoms are placed with respect to the mirrors and to each other. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that in a free space, steady-state entanglement is possible only when the two atoms are placed extremely close to each other, while in the presence of one mirror, it is possible when the two atoms placed extremely close to the mirror.

Enhancing Steady-State Entanglement Generated by a Nondegenerate Three-Level Laser with Thermal Reservoir

We analyze a nondegenerate three-level cascade laser with an open cavity and coupled to a two-mode thermal reservoir employing the stochastic differential equations for atomic operators associated with the normal ordering. Applying the large-time approximation scheme, we obtain the solutions for the corresponding equations of evolution of the expectation values of atomic operators. Furthermore, employing the resulting solutions, we studied the photon as well as cavity atomic-state entanglement amplification of the cavity radiation.

Engineering optomechanical entanglement via dual-mode cooling with a single reservoir

We study reservoir-engineered entanglement for a cascaded bosonic system consisting of three modes, where the adjacent pairs couple to each other via both the beam-splitter interaction and the coherent parametric interaction with the interaction strengths being tunable. We focus on an optomechanical realization of the model by combining a nondegenerate parametric amplifier and an auxiliary cavity. A great steady-state cavity-mechanical entanglement can be achieved by optimizing the ratio of the interaction strengths, where the optomechanical cavity enacts the cold reservoir, simultaneously laser cooling the pair of hybrid modes delocalized over the auxiliary cavity and the mechanical oscillator. In comparison with the case of cooling a single delocalized mode, the dual-mode cooling approach allows one to obtain a greater amount of entanglement with higher cooling efficiencies and to explore strong entanglement in much broader parameter regions, where the rotating-wave approximation fails for the single-mode cooling case. Moreover, we show that the steady-state cavity-mechanical entanglement is robust to the mechanical thermal noise of the high temperature. The improved reservoir engineering approach can potentially be generalized to other bosonic systems with asymmetric beam-splitter and parametric interactions.