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arXiv:1011.2027 · Journal of Mathematical Physics

Commutativity of the adiabatic elimination limit of fast oscillatory components and the instantaneous feedback limit in quantum feedback networks

John Edward Gough, Hendra I. Nurdin, Sebastian Wildfeuer

Published Dec 1, 2010• 30 citations
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Abstract

We show that, for arbitrary quantum feedback networks consisting of several quantum mechanical components connected by quantum fields, the limit of adiabatic elimination of fast oscillator modes in the components and the limit of instantaneous transmission along internal quantum field connections commute. The underlying technique is to show that both limits involve a Schur complement procedure. The result shows that the frequently used approximations, for instance, to eliminate strongly coupled optical cavities, are mathematically consistent.

DOI
10.1063/1.3520513

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We show that, for arbitrary quantum feedback networks consisting of several quantum mechanical components connected by quantum fields, the limit of adiabatic elimination of fast oscillator modes in the components and the limit of instantaneous transmission along internal quantum field connections commute. The underlying technique is to show that both limits involve a Schur complement procedure. The result shows that the frequently used approximations, for instance, to eliminate strongly coupled optical cavities, are mathematically consistent.
Classical feedback control and system theory are playing an important role in modelling, controlling and analysing complex devices in many branches of engineering. Recent developments like quantum computers and miniaturisation of existing applications and devices are increasing the importance of the ability to control systems with quantum effects. Efforts have been made recently to extent the simplicity and power of the language of classical control theory to quantum mechanical systems. Within this framework of “Quantum Feedback Networks” we are investigating two problems. The first problem concerns the enhancement of squeezed states. It has been observed that the squeezing effect of squeezing devices can be enhancement by measurement based feedback techniques or use of optical cavities. We are investigating the possibility of feedback enhanced squeezing using coherent feedback control. Considered is a static ideal squeezing devices interacting with a single mode cavity undergoing coherent feedback using a beam splitter. We show that the overall squeezing of the output depends on the beam-splitter’s reflectivity and that we are thus able to enhance the squeezing by choosing an appropriate configuration of the beam-splitter. In the second part we investigate the question of compatibility of a rigorous approach to the adiabatic elimination of some degrees of freedom of a quantum mechanical systems and instantaneous feed-forward and feedback limits for quantum mechanical networks. The commutativity of both limits is not obvious but frequently assumed in quantum optics. We show that both limit procedures are instances of Schur complements and prove the commutativity of both limits by generalising a statement about successive Schur complements.
The method of adiabatic elimination has been widely adopted in quantum optics in the past several decades. In the study of cavity-based light-matter interactions, the bad-cavity limit is often encountered, where the damping rate of the cavity is much larger than the interaction strength. The fast-damped cavity will quickly relax to a quasi-stationary state, and one can eliminate the cavity from the equation of motion by setting its time derivative to zero. Elimination of the cavity in the bad-cavity limit can reduce the dimensionality of the equations of motion of the system. However, we find that the adiabatic elimination procedure performed in the quantum Langevin equation leads to an incorrect commutation relation, which was rarely discussed in the former studies, as far as we know. Here, we show the incorrect commutation relation arises from the fact that the high frequency of the vacuum noise should be cut off to perform adiabatic elimination, but the noise with high frequency cutoff is still treated as white noise with infinite bandwidth and delta commutation relation. We also study the correlation function and show that the high frequency part of noise contributes very little when averaged over the bath. Therefore, the adiabatic elimination method can reduce the complexity of the calculations while maintaining physical reliability.
Feedback in compound quantum systems is effected by using the output from one subsystem (``the system'') to control the evolution of a second subsystem (``the ancilla'') that is reversibly coupled to the system. In the limit where the ancilla responds to fluctuations on a much shorter time scale than does the system, we show that it can be adiabatically eliminated, yielding a master equation for the system alone. This is very significant as it decreases the necessary basis size for numerical simulation and allows the effect of the ancilla to be understood more easily. We consider two types of ancilla: a two-level ancilla (e.g., a two-level atom) and an infinite-level ancilla (e.g., an optical mode). For each, we consider two forms of feedback: coherent (for which a quantum-mechanical description of the feedback loop is required) and incoherent (for which a classical description is sufficient). We test the master equations we obtain using numerical simulation of the full dynamics of the compound system. For the system (a parametric oscillator) and feedback (intensity-dependent detuning) we choose, good agreement is found in the limit of heavy damping of the ancilla. We discuss the relation of our work to previous work on feedback in compound quantum systems, and also to previous work on adiabatic elimination in general.
Quantum feedback networks have been introduced in quantum optics as a framework for constructing arbitrary networks of quantum mechanical systems connected by unidirectional quantum optical fields, and has allowed for a system theoretic approach to open quantum optics systems. Our aim here is to establish a network theory for quantum transport systems where typically the mediating fields between systems are bidirectional. Mathematically, this leads us to study quantum feedback networks where fields arrive at ports in input-output pairs, making it a special case of the unidirectional theory where inputs and outputs are paired. However, it is conceptually important to develop this theory in the context of quantum transport theory-the resulting theory extends traditional approaches which tend to view the components in quantum transport as scatterers for the various fields, in the process allowing us to consider emission and absorption of field quanta by these components. The quantum feedback network theory is applicable to both Bose and Fermi fields, moreover, it applies to nonlinear dynamics for the component systems. We advance the general theory, but study the case of linear passive quantum components in some detail.
We express the rules for forming quantum feedback networks using the Stratonovich form of quantum stochastic calculus rather than the Itō or SLH (J. E. Gough and M. R. James, “Quantum feedback networks: Hamiltonian formulation,” Commun. Math. Phys. 287, 1109 (2009), J. E. Gough and M. R. James, “The Series product and its application to quantum feedforward and feedback networks,” IEEE Trans. Autom. Control 54, 2530 (2009)) form. Remarkably the feedback reduction rule implies that we obtain the Schur complement of the matrix of Stratonovich coupling operators where we short out the internal input/output coefficients.