We define and analyse the concept of entanglement production during the evolution of a general quantum mechanical dissipative system. While it is important to minimise entropy production in order to achieve thermodynamical efficiency, maximising the rate of change of entanglement is important in quantum information processing. Quantitative relations are obtained between entropy and entanglement productions, under specific assumptions detailed in the text. We apply these to the processes of dephasing and decay of correlations between two initially entangled qubits. Both the Master equation treatment as well as the higher Hilbert space analysis are presented. Our formalism is very general and contains as special cases many reported individual instance of entanglement dynamics, such as, for example, the recently discovered notion of the sudden death of entanglement.
We define and analyse the concept of entanglement production during the evolution of a general quantum mechanical dissipative system. While it is important to minimise entropy production in order to achieve thermodynamical efficiency, maximising the rate of change of entanglement is important in quantum information processing. Quantitative relations are obtained between entropy and entanglement productions, under specific assumptions detailed in the text. We apply these to the processes of dephasing and decay of correlations between two initially entangled qubits. Both the Master equation treatment as well as the higher Hilbert space analysis are presented. Our formalism is very general and contains as special cases many reported individual instance of entanglement dynamics, such as, for example, the recently discovered notion of the sudden death of entanglement.
Abstract Entropy production plays a pivotal role in characterizing the inherent irreversibility of non-equilibrium quantum processes, and a thorough understanding of this concept holds immense potential for advancing the design of thermodynamically efficient quantum technologies. In this work, we demonstrate that the entropy production observed in multipartite open quantum systems, undergoing independent dissipations, arises from two sources: the local dynamics governing individual subsystems and the non-local correlations embedded within the system. The contributions of quantum correlations, as genuine quantum effects, to entropy production are identified explicitly. The revelation of the source of entropy production is substantiated by an analysis of its stochastic counterpart, derived from quantum trajectories. Furthermore, we propose an experimentally feasible scheme to isolate the contributions of both classical and quantum correlations to entropy production. The theoretical findings are simulated using an optical setup. Our work establishes a profound connection between thermodynamic and informational quantities, elucidating the source of irreversibility in the non-equilibrium process of multipartite quantum systems and the genuine quantum contribution therein.
Abstract In the problem of entanglement there exist two different notions. One is the entanglement of a quantum state, characterizing the state structure. The other is entanglement production by quantum operators, describing the action of operators in the given Hilbert space. Entanglement production by statistical operators, or density operators, is an important notion arising in quantum measurements and quantum information processing. The operational meaning of the entangling power of any operator, including statistical operators, is the property of the operators to entangle wave functions of the Hilbert space they are defined on. The measure of entanglement production by statistical operators is described and illustrated by entangled quantum states, equilibrium Gibbs states, as well as by the state of a complex multiparticle spinor system. It is shown that this measure is in intimate relation to other notions of quantum information theory, such as the purity of quantum states, linear entropy, or impurity, inverse participation ratio, quadratic Rényi entropy, the correlation function of composite measurements, and decoherence phenomenon. This measure can be introduced for a set of statistical operators characterizing a system after quantum measurements. The explicit value of the measure depends on the type of the Hilbert space partitioning. For a general multiparticle spinor system, it is possible to accomplish the particle-particle partitioning or spin-spatial partitioning. Conditions are defined showing when entanglement production is maximal and when it is zero. The study on entanglement production by statistical operators is important because, depending on whether such an operator is entangling or not, it generates qualitatively different probability measures, which is principal for quantum measurements and quantum information processing.
The thermodynamics of quantum processes is a recent field of study and it has been growing in recent years. Previously thought of as an emergent phenomenon for macroscopic systems, thermodynamics started being applied to quantum systems considering quantities such as heat and work as stochastics. The peculiarity of these systems is that, in addition to studying energetic resources, we must also take into account quantum informational resources such as entanglement and coherence. In this scenario, entropy becomes an important quantity, because in addition to being related to the irreversibility of a process, it can also be used as a measure of the amount of information in the system to which we have access. Entropy, unlike energy, is not a conserved quantity; that is, in a closed system, there is not only an entropy flow between it\'s parts, but also, in general, entropy production. According to the principle of Landauer [IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 183191 (1961)], it is the entropy produced that causes the loss of information. Studying, then, the production of entropy becomes important for areas such as quantum computing, where you want to have control over information gains and losses. In quantum processes, entropy is produced due both to changes in the energy of the system and to fluctuations in coherence [Phys. Rev. E 99, 042105 (2019); npj Quantum Information 5, 23 (2019)], a purely quantum resource. In this project, we propose to study the statistics of entropy production due to coherence. For this, we will investigate two different splittings of the entropy production: the one proposed in [Phys. Rev. E, vol. 99, 042105 (2019); npj Quantum Information 5, 23 (2019)] and a most recent one proposed in [Phys. Rev. Research 2, 023377 (2020); New Journal of Physics 23, 063027 (2021)]. For simplicity, we will analyse a unitary quantum process, using the two-point measurement (TPM) scheme [Phys. Rev. E 75, 050102 (2007)]. We will apply both formalisms for two specific quantum systems: a macrospin model and the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model [Nuclear Physics, vol. 62, no. 2, pp. 188 224 (1965)]. We will analyse, in these cases, how the distribution of coherence depends on parameters such as system dimension, temperature, evolution in time, etc.
Thermodynamics is a phenomenological theory describing the energy conversion of work and heat. At its origins thermodynamics was developed in order to understand and improve heat engines. In conventional thermodynamics, however, only such processes are completely describable which are slow enough to keep the system of interest in an equilibrium state with its thermal environment at all times. On the contrary, all real physical processes are accompanied by non-equilibrium phenomena. These are mathematically described with the help of the irreversible entropy production, i.e. the dissipated work divided by the temperature of the bath. The second law of thermodynamics merely states that the irreversible entropy production is on average always positive. The modern trend of miniaturization, however, leads to smaller and smaller devices. On short length scales thermal noise as well as quantum fluctuations become important. Thus, usual thermodynamic quantities as work and heat acquire stochastic nature. Moreover, in the quantum regime a completely new theory had to be invented, since classical notions of work and heat are no longer valid. The present dissertation contributes to this prevailing field by the derivation of analytical expressions for the entropy production in open and closed quantum system far from thermal equilibrium. The theoretical treatment is motivated by an experimental point of view. The obtained results were derived from the reduced dynamics of the quantum mechanical system, which may be coupled to a thermal bath. To this end, it was dealt with methods and approaches of statistical physics, conventional thermodynamics, quantum information theory and the theory of open quantum systems. In this dissertation the most important physical systems are treated. First, an isolated system is considered before later on a heat bath is included. The limit of weak as well as of strong coupling are analyzed in detail. For isolated systems it turns out that a geometric approach is able to capture the thermodynamic properties, completely. To this end, the irreversible entropy production is sharply estimated from below by the angle between the real non-equilibrium state and the corresponding equilibrium one. Further, it is shown that the Heisenberg uncertainty relation for energy and time can be formulated more precisely in terms of that angle. As experimental system cold ion traps are introduced, in which the theoretical predictions can be verified. For weakly coupled systems, then, the irreversible entropy production is identified and a fluctuation theorem is derived by merely thermodynamic arguments. As experimental system we, again, propose the cold ion traps, where the heat bath can be simulated with the help of LASER light. In the limit of strong coupling a semiclassical description of the reduced quantum system is discussed. Again, an analytically exact expression for the entropy production and the corresponding fluctuation theorem is derived. A physical system, in which strong coupling to the environment can be analyzed, is given by Josephson junctions. This dissertation discusses the entropy production for isolated, weakly coupled, and overdamped quantum systems. For these physical regimes analytical relation are derived and experimental systems proposed, with which the predictions can be verified.
A consistent theory of non-equilibrium thermodynamics for Markovian open quantum systems has been developed in the late seventies in analogy with Classical Irreversible Thermodynamics. The time-evolution of these open systems is usually described by means of effective master equations in Lindblad form, that turn out to be reliable when there is a separation of time-scales between system and environment, such that memory effects are negligible and the so-called Markovian approximation is justified. In this framework, the variations of energy and entropy in the system are consistently described, distinguishing between heat and work contributions and providing a statement of the second law of thermodynamics as positivity of the entropy production.\nHowever, there is empirical evidence that many physical systems like photosynthetic complexes,\nopto-mechanical resonators and superconducting qubits, just to mention a few, experience more general non-Markovian dynamics. The formulation of the laws of thermodynamics in a non-Markovian setting is matter of current research and represents the main topic of the present work. As a first step, we show that the entropy production defined as in the Markovian case can be negative for a class of non-Markovian dynamics. We argue that this outcome should not be interpreted as a violation of the second law of thermodynamics because the environment must be explicitly taken into account in the balance of entropy in the non-Markovian setting. In order to justify this claim we adopt a more general point of view, studying a closed bipartite quantum system, such that each of the two subsystems plays the role of a finite environment out of equilibrium for the other one. We concentrate on the balance of energy first and construct an effective Hamiltonian for each subsystem using physically reasonable requirements; then we define heat and work as in the standard Markovian treatment, with the effective Hamiltonian replacing the free Hamiltonian. It turns out that, in our framework, the work power is perfectly balanced between subsystems, while the correlations can store a part of energy locally inaccessible and exchange it with both subsystems in the form of heat.\nConcerning the balance of entropy, a quite general formulation of the second law of thermodynamics can be given as follows: under the assumption of a factorized initial state for the compound system, the sum of the total variations of the entropies in the two subsystems is always nonnegative. We show with an explicit example that this general formulation does not correspond to the statement presented in the framework of Markovian master equations, which should not be considered a priori the second law of thermodynamics.\nIn the last part of the thesis we concentrate of the so-called fluctuation relations, that are results extending the thermodynamic formalism beyond the behavior of average quantities. After reviewing the main theoretical outcomes, such as the Jarzynski equality and the Crooks fluctuation theorem, we describe a proposal to access experimentally the work performed on an ensemble of diatomic molecules by a time-dependent electric field coupled with their vibrational degree of freedom. This procedure could then be used to test the quantum Jarzynski equality. With respect to the results so far appeared in the literature, in which the left-hand side of the equality is inferred from an experiment and the right-hand side is computed according to a model, in our proposed setting we should be able to estimate from the experiment both the left-hand side and the right-hand side of the equality, independently.
Abstract Recent studies have pointed out the intrinsic dependence of figures of merit of thermodynamic relevance—such as work, heat and entropy production—on the amount of quantum coherences that is made available to a system. However, whether coherences hinder or enhance the value taken by such quantifiers of thermodynamic performance is yet to be ascertained. We show that, when considering entropy production generated in a process taking a finite-size bipartite quantum system out of equilibrium through local non-unitary channels, no general monotonicity relationship exists between the entropy production and degree of quantum coherence in the state of the system. A direct correspondence between such quantities can be retrieved when considering specific forms of open-system dynamics applied to suitably chosen initial states. Our results call for a systematic study of the role of genuine quantum features in the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of quantum processes.