There is presently considerable interest in accurately simulating the evolution of open systems for which Markovian master equations fail. Examples are systems that are time dependent and/or strongly damped. A number of elegant methods have now been devised to do this, but all use a bath consisting of a continuum of harmonic oscillators. While this bath is clearly appropriate for, e.g., systems coupled to the electromagnetic field, it is not so clear that it is a good model for generic many-body systems. Here we explore a different approach to exactly simulating open systems: using a finite bath chosen to have certain key properties of thermalizing many-body systems. To explore the numerical resources required by this method to approximate an open system coupled to an infinite bath, we simulate a weakly damped system and compare to the evolution given by the relevant Markovian master equation. We obtain the Markovian evolution with reasonable accuracy by using an additional averaging procedure, and elucidate how the typicality of the bath generates the correct thermal steady state via the process of "eigenstate thermalization."
There is presently considerable interest in accurately simulating the evolution of open systems for which Markovian master equations fail. Examples are systems that are time dependent and/or strongly damped. A number of elegant methods have now been devised to do this, but all use a bath consisting of a continuum of harmonic oscillators. While this bath is clearly appropriate for, e.g., systems coupled to the electromagnetic field, it is not so clear that it is a good model for generic many-body systems. Here we explore a different approach to exactly simulating open systems: using a finite bath chosen to have certain key properties of thermalizing many-body systems. To explore the numerical resources required by this method to approximate an open system coupled to an infinite bath, we simulate a weakly damped system and compare to the evolution given by the relevant Markovian master equation. We obtain the Markovian evolution with reasonable accuracy by using an additional averaging procedure, and elucidate how the typicality of the bath generates the correct thermal steady state via the process of "eigenstate thermalization."
We use the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis to derive a quantum master equation for a system that is weakly coupled to a chaotic finite-sized bath prepared in a pure state. We show that the emergence of Markovianity is controlled by the spectral function of the ETH and that local detailed balance emerges in the Markovian regime for a broad class of pure bath states. We numerically verify this result by comparing the master equation to dynamics computed using exact diagonalization of a chaotic Hamiltonian. We also compare the master equation to exact dynamics for an integrable bath and find that at finite size they strongly disagree. Our work puts forward eigenstate thermalization as a foundation for open quantum systems theory, thus extending it beyond ensemble bath preparations to chaotic many-body environments in generic pure states.
A method for the systematic construction of few-body damped harmonic oscillator networks accurately reproducing the effect of general bosonic environments in open quantum systems is presented. Under the sole assumptions of a Gaussian environment and regardless of the system coupled to it, an algorithm to determine the parameters of an equivalent set of interacting damped oscillators obeying a Markovian quantum master equation is introduced. By choosing a suitable coupling to the system and minimizing an appropriate distance between the two-time correlation function of this effective bath and that of the target environment, the error induced in the reduced dynamics of the system is brought under rigorous control. The interactions among the effective modes provide remarkable flexibility in replicating non-Markovian effects on the system even with a small number of oscillators, and the resulting Lindblad equation for the system and the modes may therefore be integrated at a very reasonable computational cost using standard methods for Markovian problems, even in strongly nonperturbative coupling regimes and at arbitrary temperatures including zero. We apply the method to an exactly solvable problem in order to demonstrate its accuracy, and present two studies based on current research in the context of coherent transport in biological aggregates and organic photovoltaics as more realistic examples of its use and potential; performance and versatility are highlighted, and theoretical and numerical advantages over existing methods, as well as possible future improvements, are discussed.
Obtaining dynamics of an interacting quantum many-body system connected to multiple baths initially at different, finite, temperatures and chemical potentials is a challenging problem. This is due to a combination of the prevalence of strong correlations in the system, the infinite nature of the baths and the long time to reach steady state. In this paper, we develop a general formalism that allows access to the full non-Markovian dynamics of such open quantum many-body systems up to the nonequilibrium steady state, provided its uniqueness. Specifically, we show how finite-time evolution in the presence of finite-sized baths, whose opportune size is determined by their original spectral density, can be recursively used to faithfully reconstruct the exact dynamics without requiring any small parameter. Such a reconstruction is possible even in parameter regimes which would otherwise be inaccessible by current state-of-the-art techniques. We specifically demonstrate this by obtaining the full numerically exact non-Markovian dynamics of interacting fermionic chains in two terminal setups with finite temperature and voltage biases, a problem which previously remained outstanding despite its relevance in a wide range of contexts, for example, quantum heat engines and refrigerators.
Open quantum systems have drawn attention over decades due to its applicability in the foundation of theoretical physics, e.g. statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics. The dynamics of open quantum systems has been described as separate entities from their surrounding environment that consists of a very large number of modes, somehow coupled to the mode of the system. Even though the exact solution of the dynamical behavior of the system is impossible to calculate, we obtain a tentative solution using the crucial Markov approximation. The input-output formalism of the quantum Langevin equation (QLE) has been considered as a useful tool which provides a semi-classical description of the dynamics of the system, whereas the master equation provides a complete picture of the dynamics of the system expressed in terms of density matrix. While studying the dynamics of nonlinear system/environment coupling using QLE, we see, for a small value of external field, that the steady state system field does not change much from the steady state field obtained in the absence of nonlinear dissipation. However, in a case where a stronger external field is applied, we see that the deviation becomes substantial from the solution of linear system. We also see that the nonlinear coupling introduces significant difference in the cavity fluctuation spectrum. The description, therefore, provides a potential explanation of parametric effects in terms of nonlinear dissipation phenomena associated with the nonlinear coupling. Even though the theories developed in the context of open quantum systems have proven to be powerful tools, they do not provide a satisfactory platform to be implemented on non-linear Hamiltonians. We often approximate it by linearizing over nonlinear steady state field amplitude, and therefore, the interesting effects are often overlooked. The limitation of the analytics provokes us to simulate open quantum dynamics numerically. The numerical method consists of transformation of the environmental degrees of freedom to a one-dimensional many-body chain, and the computational technique includes numerical diagonalization and renormalization process. The time-adaptive density matrix renormalisation group (t-DMRG) is known as one of the most powerful techniques for the simulation of strongly-correlated many-body quantum systems. In this thesis, along with the theoretical modeling, we implement DMRG numerical scheme for the simulation of canonical S/B model by mapping it to one-dimensional harmonic chain with nearest neighbor interactions, and use the method to investigate the dynamics of the free dissipative system. The thermalization of open quantum systems is also studied by generating minimally entangled typical thermal states (METTS) through imaginary time evolution, and real-time evolving an empty system in the presence of the thermal bath. Further, we simulate coherently driven free dissipative Kerr nonlinear system numerically using Euler's method by solving Heisenberg equation of motion and t-DMRG algorithm, and demonstrate how the numerical results are analogous to classical bistability. By comparing with analytics, we see that the DMRG numerics is analogous to the quantum-mechanical exact solution obtained by mapping the equation of motion of the density matrix of the system to a Fokker-Plank equation. The comparison between two different numerical techniques shows that the semi-classical Euler's method determines the dynamics of the system field of one among two coherent branches, whereas DMRG numerics gives the superposition of both of them. Hence, DMRG-determined time dynamics undergoes generating non-classical states. Our approach of dealing with nonlinearity represents an important contribution in the developments of technique to study the dynamical and steady-state behavior of open quantum systems, which is a fundamental aspect of quantum physics.
A finite-dimensional quantum system is coupled to a bath of oscillators in thermal equilibrium at temperature T>0 . We show that for fixed, small values of the coupling constant λ , the true reduced dynamics of the system is approximated by the completely positive, trace preserving Markovian semigroup generated by the Davies-Lindblad generator. The difference between the true and the Markovian dynamics is O(|λ|1/4) for all times, meaning that the solution of the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad master equation is approximating the true dynamics to accuracy O(|λ|1/4) for all times. Our method is based on a recently obtained expansion of the full system-bath propagator. It applies to reservoirs with correlation functions decaying in time as 1/t4 or faster, which is a significant improvement relative to the previously required exponential decay.
We develop a Markovian master equation in the Lindblad form that enables the efficient study of a wide range of open quantum many-body systems that would be inaccessible with existing methods. The validity of the master equation is based entirely on properties of the bath and the system-bath coupling, without any requirements on the level structure within the system itself. The master equation is derived using a Markov approximation that is distinct from that used in earlier approaches. We provide a rigorous bound for the error induced by this Markov approximation; the error is controlled by a dimensionless combination of intrinsic correlation and relaxation timescales of the bath. Our master equation is accurate on the same level of approximation as the Bloch-Redfield equation. In contrast to the Bloch-Redfield approach, our approach ensures preservation of the positivity of the density matrix. As a result, our method is robust, and can be solved efficiently using stochastic evolution of pure states (rather than density matrices). We discuss how our method can be applied to static or driven quantum many-body systems, and illustrate its power through numerical simulation of a spin chain that would be challenging to treat by existing methods.