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arXiv:0910.4021 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Environment-induced entanglement in a refined weak-coupling limit

Fabio Benatti, Roberto Floreanini B, Ugo Marzolino

Published Oct 1, 2009• 41 citations
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Abstract

Two non-directly interacting qubits with equal frequencies can become entangled via a Markovian, dissipative dynamics through the action of a weakly coupled Ohmic heat bath. In the standard weak-coupling limit derivation, this purely dissipative effect disappears if the frequencies are different because of the “ergodic average” used by this approach. However, there are physical situations where this technique is too rough to capture all the relevant aspects of the dissipative dynamics. In these cases, in order to better describe the physical behavior of the open system, it is necessary to go beyond the “ergodic average”. We show that, in this more refined framework, the entanglement capability of the environment persists also in the case of different frequencies.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/88/20011

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Two non-directly interacting qubits with equal frequencies can become entangled via a Markovian, dissipative dynamics through the action of a weakly coupled Ohmic heat bath. In the standard weak-coupling limit derivation, this purely dissipative effect disappears if the frequencies are different because of the “ergodic average” used by this approach. However, there are physical situations where this technique is too rough to capture all the relevant aspects of the dissipative dynamics. In these cases, in order to better describe the physical behavior of the open system, it is necessary to go beyond the “ergodic average”. We show that, in this more refined framework, the entanglement capability of the environment persists also in the case of different frequencies.
The evolution of quantum entanglement of a pair of non-interacting qubits is studied for the case where one of them is non-dissipatively but dephasingly coupled to the environment. The reduced non-Markovian dynamics of the qubits is exact for an arbitrary strength of coupling to the environment and the arbitrary frequency spectrum of environment fluctuations. While for the subohmic and ohmic environments the entanglement diminishes, for the superohmic zero-temperature environment it survives for a long time.
Considering two non-interacting qubits in the context of open quantum systems, it is well known that their common environment may act as an entangling agent. In a perturbative regime the influence of the environment on the system dynamics can effectively be described by a unitary and a dissipative contribution. For the two-spin Boson model with (sub-) Ohmic spectral density considered here, the particular unitary contribution (Lamb shift) easily explains the buildup of entanglement between the two qubits. Furthermore it has been argued that in the adiabatic limit, adding the so-called counterterm to the microscopic model compensates the unitary influence of the environment and, thus, inhibits the generation of entanglement. Investigating this assertion is one of the main objectives of the work presented here. Using the hierarchy of pure states (HOPS) method to numerically calculate the exact reduced dynamics, we find and explain that the degree of inhibition crucially depends on the parameter s determining the low frequency power law behavior of the spectral density J(ω)∼ωse−ω/ωc . Remarkably, we find that for resonant qubits, even in the adiabatic regime (arbitrarily large ωc ), the entanglement dynamics is still influenced by an environmentally induced Hamiltonian interaction. Further, we study the model in detail and present the exact entanglement dynamics for a wide range of coupling strengths, distinguish between resonant and detuned qubits, as well as Ohmic and deep sub-Ohmic environments. Notably, we find that in all cases the asymptotic entanglement does not vanish and conjecture a linear relation between the coupling strength and the asymptotic entanglement measured by means of concurrence. Further we discuss the suitability of various perturbative master equations for obtaining approximate entanglement dynamics.
Non-Markovian effects are often significant when the system-environment coupling is not weak. Indeed, we find that the non-Markovianity is negligible for a single two-level system undergoing pure dephasing via a weak interaction with a harmonic-oscillator environment. In this paper, we show that, within the framework of pure dephasing, the non-Markovianity displayed by a two-level system can, in fact, be far more pronounced. To demonstrate that this is indeed the case, we consider a pure dephasing model where a collection of two-level systems interacts with a common environment. We obtain analytically the dynamics of the collection of the two-level systems, and then take a partial trace over all the two-level systems except one. This remaining single two-level system exhibits markedly non-Markovian dynamics, even when the system-environment coupling is weak. This is due to the indirect interaction between the two-level systems, induced by their interaction with the common environment. In fact, this indirect interaction can not only increase the non-Markovianity by orders of magnitude, but also qualitatively change the characteristics of the non-Markovian behavior. For instance, for a single two-level system undergoing pure dephasing, the dynamics are Markovian for both Ohmic and sub-Ohmic environments. This is markedly not the case when we consider multiple two-level systems. These findings provide insights into controlling decoherence in multi-qubit quantum systems and have implications for quantum technologies where non-Markovianity can be a resource rather than a limitation.
We study the properties of a refined weak-coupling limit that preserves complete positivity in order to describe non-Markovian dynamics in the spin-boson model. With this tool, we show the system presents a rich non-Markovian phenomenology. This implies a dynamical difference between entanglement and coherence: the latter undergoes revivals, whereas the former not, despite the induced dynamics being fully incoherent. In addition, the evolution presents ``quasieternal'' non-Markovianity, becoming nondivisible at any time period where the system evolves qualitatively. Furthermore, the method allows for an exact derivation of a master equation that accounts for a reversible energy exchange between system and environment. Specifically, this is obtained in the form of a time-dependent Lamb shift term.
We demonstrate an exact mapping of a class of models of two interacting qubits in thermal reservoirs to two separate problems of spin–boson-type systems. Based on this mapping, exact numerical simulations of the qubits dynamics can be performed, beyond the weak system–bath coupling limit and the Markovian approximation. Given the time evolution of the system population and coherences, we study as an application the dynamics of entanglement between the pair of qubits immersed in boson thermal baths, showing a rich phenomenology, including an intermediate oscillatory behavior, the entanglement sudden birth, sudden death and revival. We find that the occurrence of entanglement sudden death in this model depends on the portion of the zero and double excitation states in the subsystem initial state. In the long-time limit, analytic expressions are presented at weak system–bath coupling, for a range of relevant qubit parameters.