The effect of a number of mechanisms designed to suppress decoherence in open quantum systems are studied with respect to their effectiveness at slowing down the loss of entanglement. The effect of photonic band-gap materials and frequency modulation of the system-bath coupling are along expected lines in this regard. However, other control schemes, like resonance fluorescence, achieve quite the contrary: increasing the strength of the control leads to a faster decay of entanglement. The effect of dynamic decoupling schemes on two qualitatively different system-bath interactions are studied in depth. Dynamic decoupling control has the expected effect of slowing down the decay of entanglement in a two-qubit system coupled to a harmonic oscillator bath under a nondemolition interaction. However, nontrivial phenomena are observed when a Josephson charge qubit, strongly coupled to a random telegraph noise bath, is subject to decoupling pulses. The most striking of these reflects the resonance fluorescence scenario, in that an increase in the pulse strength decreases decoherence but also speeds up the sudden death of entanglement. This demonstrates that the behavior of decoherence and entanglement in time can be qualitatively different in the strong-coupling non-Markovian regime.
The effect of a number of mechanisms designed to suppress decoherence in open quantum systems are studied with respect to their effectiveness at slowing down the loss of entanglement. The effect of photonic band-gap materials and frequency modulation of the system-bath coupling are along expected lines in this regard. However, other control schemes, like resonance fluorescence, achieve quite the contrary: increasing the strength of the control leads to a faster decay of entanglement. The effect of dynamic decoupling schemes on two qualitatively different system-bath interactions are studied in depth. Dynamic decoupling control has the expected effect of slowing down the decay of entanglement in a two-qubit system coupled to a harmonic oscillator bath under a nondemolition interaction. However, nontrivial phenomena are observed when a Josephson charge qubit, strongly coupled to a random telegraph noise bath, is subject to decoupling pulses. The most striking of these reflects the resonance fluorescence scenario, in that an increase in the pulse strength decreases decoherence but also speeds up the sudden death of entanglement. This demonstrates that the behavior of decoherence and entanglement in time can be qualitatively different in the strong-coupling non-Markovian regime.
The study of entanglement has gained prominence in recent years due to the advent of fields such as Quantum Optics and Quantum Information Theory — advances that have harnessed such counter-intuitive quantum phenomena into elements of everyday life, improving it in the process. Ideal quantum systems, “closed” to the outside world, remain quantum forever and thus manage to retain entanglement. Real quantum systems, however, are “open” to the environment and are therefore susceptible to the phenomenon of decoherence. The resultant loss of entanglement is a major hindrance to the effectiveness of quantum information tasks. In this thesis we have studied the evolution of entanglement in various types of open quantum systems (OQS) coupled in various ways to local baths. We have also studied existing ways and means of controlling the decay of entanglement and have proposed a new method of doing so. We have studied the evolution of entanglement in OQS undergoing Markovian dynamics by using the Lindblad master equation as well as the method of quantum trajectories. We have analyzed the onset of the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death in finite as well as infinite dimensional OQS, connected either locally to a thermal bath or its squeezed variant, or via a quantum non-demolition-type (QND-type) interaction to a local thermal bath. We have found that the QND-type system-bath interaction works best to conserve entanglement in finite dimensional systems, whereas a squeezed thermal bath causes entanglement sudden death even at zero temperature. We have also studied some well-known methods of controlling decoherence in open systems with respect to their ability of preserving entanglement. Some of these procedures include coupling the system to a thermal bath of photonic crystals where the photonic band gap suppresses decoherence, modulation of the systembath frequency in an attempt to contain decoherence, using the method of resonance fluorescence where an external field modulates the transition frequency of the two-qubit systems with each qubit being a two-state atomic system to contain decoherence, and using high-frequency radio waves to decouple the system and bath dynamically and thus reducing decoherence. Our study has revealed a rather startling fact — some of these decoherence control procedures actually result in an elevated rate of loss and a resultant quicker death of entanglement. This is a 6 surprising and extremely counter-intuitive result. Finally, we have proposed a new method of shielding the entanglement in the system from dissipative environmental effects. In this procedure, an ancillary system in a fixed initial state is allowed to interact with the main system through exchange interactions. We have, through numerical computation, showed that an ancilla in the ground state extends the lifespan of entanglement in the main system. Increasing the size of the ancilla, that is, increasing the value of n in an n-qubit ancilla slows down entanglement loss for a two-qubit system connected locally to a thermal bath.
We analyze the dynamics of quantum correlations between two qubits coupled to a linear chain of oscillators. The chain mediates interactions between the qubits and acts as a non-Markovian reservoir. The model is amenable to an analytical solution when the initial state of the chain is Gaussian. We study the dynamics of the qubits' concurrence starting from a separable state and assuming that the chain spectrum is gapped and the chain is initially in a thermal state. We identify three relevant regimes that depend on the strength of the qubit-chain coupling in relation to the spectral gap. These are (i) the weak-coupling regime, where the qubits are entangled at the asymptotics, (ii) the strong-coupling regime, where the concurrence can exhibit collapses followed by revivals with exponentially attenuated amplitude, and (iii) the thermal damping regime, where the concurrence rapidly vanishes due to the chain's thermal excitations. In all cases, if entanglement is generated, this occurs after a finite time has elapsed. This time scale depends exponentially on the qubits' distance and is determined by the spectral properties of the chain. Entanglement irreversible decay, on the other hand, is due to the dissipative effect induced by the coupling with the chain and is controlled by the coupling strength between the chain and qubits. This study unravels the basic mechanisms leading to entanglement in a non-Markovian bath and allows one to identify the key resources for realizing quantum coherent dynamics of open systems.
Control of decoherence in open quantum systems has become a topic of great interest due to the emergence of quantum technologies that depend on quantum coherent effects. In this work, we investigate the decoherence dynamics of systems coupled to multiple baths through noncommuting systems' operators, and beyond the weak system-bath coupling limit. By building on cooperative effects between baths, we propose a novel strategy to mitigate rapid decoherence. Concretely, we study the dynamics of a qubit coupled to multiple environments with arbitrary interaction strengths, and along different coordinates. Based on insights gained on the decoherence dynamics from the analytical Effective Hamiltonian method, we carry out numerical simulations using the Reaction Coordinate quantum master equation method. In contrast to standard expectations, we show that when the system strongly interacts with a decohering bath, increasing its coupling to a second, dissipative bath slows down the decoherence dynamics. Our work offers insights into the preservation of quantum coherences in open quantum systems based on frustration effects, by utilizing cooperative effects between different heat baths.
Due to increasing demands on speed and security of data processing, along with requirements on measurement precision in fundamental research, quantum phenomena are expected to play an increasing role in future technologies. Special attention must hence be paid to omnipresent decoherence effects, which hamper quantumness. Their consequence is always a deviation of the quantum state evolution (error) with respect to the expected unitary evolution if these effects are absent. In operational tasks such as the preparation, transformation, transmission, and detection of quantum states, these effects are detrimental and must be suppressed by strategies known as dynamical decoupling, or the more general dynamical control by modulation developed by us. The underlying dynamics must be Zeno-like, yielding suppressed coupling to the bath. There are, however, tasks which cannot be implemented by unitary evolution, in particular those involving a change of the system’s state entropy. Such tasks necessitate efficient coupling to a bath for their implementation. Examples include the use of measurements to cool (purify) a system, to equilibrate it, or to harvest and convert energy from the environment. If the underlying dynamics is anti-Zeno like, enhancement of this coupling to the bath will occur and thereby facilitate the task, as discovered by us. A general task may also require state and energy transfer, or entanglement of noninteracting parties via shared modes of the bath which call for maximizing the shared (two-partite) couplings with the bath, but suppressing the single-partite couplings. For such tasks, a more subtle interplay of Zeno and anti-Zeno dynamics may be optimal. We have therefore constructed a general framework for optimizing the way a system interacts with its environment to achieve a desired task. This optimization consists in adjusting a given “score” that quantifies the success of the task, such as the targeted fidelity, purity, entropy, entanglement, or energy by dynamical modification of the system-bath coupling spectrum on demand.
We study the non-Markovian decoherence and disentanglement dynamics of dissipative quantum systems with special emphasis on non-Gaussian continuous variable systems. The dynamics are described by the Hu-Paz-Zhang master equation of quantum Brownian motion. The time evolution of the decoherence function of a single-mode superposition is compared to the concurrence of a two-mode entangled state. It is verified that moderate non-Markovian influences slow down the decay of interference fringes and quantum correlations, while strong non-Markovian effects resulting from an out-of-resonance bath can even accelerate the loss of coherence, compared to predictions of Markovian approximations. Qualitatively different scenarios including exponential, Gaussian or algebraic decay of the decoherence function are analyzed. It is shown that partial revivals of coherence can occur in case of non-Lindblad-type dynamics.
Entanglement is very susceptible to decoherence and can rapidly decay or even completely disappear in finite time. A universal dynamical control of the disentanglement approach is presented, whereby one locally modulates entangled systems weakly coupled to thermal baths. We show that these local modulations can reduce the entanglement's decay rate and may facilitate controlled oscillations of entanglement that result in entanglement partial resuscitation. In the case of separate systems, we show that controlling the asymmetry between the systems' decoherence rates may result in partial resuscitation in non-Markovian time scales. Furthermore, controlling the time-dependent cross-decoherence of systems coupled to the same bath may exhibit partial resuscitation on longer time scales, dictated by the local modulations.