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arXiv:1111.2123 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

A cutoff phenomenon for quantum Markov chains

Michael J Kastoryano, David Reeb, Michael M Wolf

Published Feb 1, 2012• 41 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We derive upper and lower bounds on the convergence behavior of certain classes of one-parameter quantum dynamical semigroups. The classes we consider, consist of tensor product channels and of channels with commuting Liouvillians. We introduce the notion of cutoff phenomenon in the setting of quantum information theory, and show how it exemplifies the fact that the convergence of (quantum) stochastic processes is not solely governed by the spectral gap of the transition map. We apply the new methods to show that graph states can be prepared efficiently, albeit not in constant time, by dissipation, and give the exact scaling behavior of the time to stationarity.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/45/7/075307

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arXiv:1210.1171•Journal of Mathematical Physics•Mar 1, 2013•29 citations
We derive upper and lower bounds on the convergence behavior of certain classes of one-parameter quantum dynamical semigroups. The classes we consider, consist of tensor product channels and of channels with commuting Liouvillians. We introduce the notion of cutoff phenomenon in the setting of quantum information theory, and show how it exemplifies the fact that the convergence of (quantum) stochastic processes is not solely governed by the spectral gap of the transition map. We apply the new methods to show that graph states can be prepared efficiently, albeit not in constant time, by dissipation, and give the exact scaling behavior of the time to stationarity.
A basic question in quantum information theory is to quantify the optimal rate of transmitting quantum information via a given quantum channel using certain coding schemes. We study this question for discrete- and continuous-time quantum Markov processes. For continuous-time processes modeling a quantum memory we introduce new capacities where coding channels may be applied during the storage time. We prove upper bounds on these quantities by studying the entropy production of quantum Markov processes.
This thesis is the fruit of investigations on the extension of ideas of Markov chain mixing to the quantum setting, and its application to problems of dissipative engineering. A Markov chain describes a statistical process where the probability of future events depends only on the state of the system at the present point in time, but not on the history of events. Very many important processes in nature are of this type, therefore a good understanding of their behavior has turned out to be very fruitful for science. Markov chains always have a non-empty set of limiting distributions (stationary states). The aim of Markov chain mixing is to obtain (upper and/or lower) bounds on the number of steps it takes for the Markov chain to reach a stationary state. The natural quantum extensions of these notions are density matrices and quantum channels. We set out to develop a general mathematical framework for studying quantum Markov chain mixing. We introduce two new distance measures into the quantum setting; the quantum χ2divergence and Hilbert’s projective metric. The quantum χ2 divergence allows us to extend the class of functional techniques called Poincare inequalities to the quantum setting. In the process, we identify the appropriate framework for discussing notions such as detailed balance and χ2-mixing: monotone Riemannian metrics on matrix spaces. This insight allows us to characterize the connection between spectral properties of a (primitive) quantum channel and its mixing time. Within the same framework we also derive a restricted quantum version of the celebrated conductance bound (Cheeger’s inequality). We then consider Hilbert’s projective metric a well known tool in Perron-Frobenius theory in the context of quantum information theory. As a classic tool for analyzing convergence of positive maps on cones, Hilbert’s projective metric is especially good at providing existence proofs of maps between two spaces (or cones). We relate this measure to distinguishability measures on restricted cones of operators, and analyze the observable loss of information after the application of a quantum channel under a restrict set of measurements. Various notions of contractivity of quantum channels are revealed through Hilbert’s metric. Still on the topic of quantum Markov chains, we introduce the notion of cutoff phenomenon to the quantum setting. The cutoff phenomenon describes the situation when a Markov chain does not converge for a potentially long time, and then at a specific point in time abruptly converges to equilibrium. In the thermodynamic limit, the convergence profile will then look like a step function. We show that this type of convergence behavior occurs, as measured in trace-norm, when a system is subject to a product channel, and the noise on each product is modeled by a one-parameter semigroup of quantum channels. Finally, we consider three independent tasks of dissipative engineering. The first task, which is aimed at experimental realization in the near future, consists in dissipatively
Motivated by a model presented by S. Gudder, we study a quantum generalization of Markov chains and discuss the relation between these maps and open quantum random walks, a class of quantum channels described by S. Attal et al. We consider processes which are nonhomogeneous in time, i.e., at each time step, a possibly distinct evolution kernel. Inspired by a spectral technique described by L. Saloff-Coste and J. Zúñiga, we define a notion of ergodicity for nonhomogeneous quantum Markov chains and describe a criterion for ergodicity of such objects in terms of singular values. As a consequence we obtain a quantum version of the classical probability result concerning the behavior of the columns (or rows) of the iterates of a stochastic matrix induced by a finite, irreducible, aperiodic Markov chain. We are also able to relate the ergodic property presented here with the notions of weak and uniform ergodicity known in the literature of noncommutative L1L^1L1-spaces.
Despite extensive study, our understanding of quantum Markov chains remains far less complete than that of their classical counterparts. [Temme'13] observed that the Davies Lindbladian, a well-studied model of quantum Markov dynamics, contains an embedded classical Markov generator, raising the natural question of how the convergence properties of the quantum and classical dynamics are related. While [Temme'13] showed that the spectral gap of the Davies Lindbladian can be much smaller than that of the embedded classical generator for certain highly structured Hamiltonians, we show that if the spectrum of the Hamiltonian does not contain long arithmetic progressions, then the two spectral gaps must be comparable. As a consequence, we prove that for a large class of Hamiltonians, including those obtained by perturbing a fixed Hamiltonian with a generic external field, the quantum spectral gap remains within a constant factor of the classical spectral gap. Our result aligns with physical intuition and enables the application of classical Markov chain techniques to the quantum setting. The proof is based on showing that any ``off-diagonal'' eigenvector of the Davies generator can be used to construct an observable which commutes with the Hamiltonian and has a Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient which can be upper bounded in terms of that of the original eigenvector's Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient. Thus, a spectral gap for such observables implies a spectral gap for the full Davies generator.
We study the entropy increase of quantum systems evolving under primitive, doubly stochastic Markovian noise and thus converging to the maximally mixed state. This entropy increase can be quantified by a logarithmic-Sobolev constant of the Liouvillian generating the noise. We prove a universal lower bound on this constant that stays invariant under taking tensor-powers. Our methods involve a new comparison method to relate logarithmic-Sobolev constants of different Liouvillians and a technique to compute logarithmic-Sobolev inequalities of Liouvillians with eigenvectors forming a projective representation of a finite abelian group. Our bounds improve upon similar results established before and as an application we prove an upper bound on continuous-time quantum capacities. In the last part of this work we study entropy production estimates of discrete-time doubly stochastic quantum channels by extending the framework of discrete-time logarithmic-Sobolev inequalities to the quantum case.
We investigate the stability of quantum Markov processes with respect to perturbations of their transition maps. In the first part, we introduce a condition number that measures the sensitivity of fixed points of a quantum channel to perturbations. We establish upper and lower bounds on this condition number in terms of subdominant eigenvalues of the transition map. In the second part, we consider quantum Markov processes that converge to a unique stationary state and we analyze the stability of the evolution at finite times. In this way we obtain a linear relation between the mixing time of a quantum Markov process and the sensitivity of its fixed point with respect to perturbations of the transition map.