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arXiv:1205.5622 · Physica Scripta

Partial decoherence in mesoscopic systems

Amnon Aharony A, Shmuel Gurvitz, 康弘 都倉, Ora Entin-wohlman A, Sushanta Dattagupta

Published Nov 1, 2012• 5 citations
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Abstract

The coupling of a mesoscopic system with its environment usually causes total decoherence: at long times the reduced density matrix of the system evolves in time to a limit which is independent of its initial value, losing all the quantum information stored in its initial state. Under special circumstances, a subspace of the system's Hilbert space remains coherent, or "decoherence free", and the reduced density matrix approaches a non-trivial limit which contains information on its initial quantum state, despite the coupling to the environment. This situation is called "partial decoherence". Here we find the conditions for partial decoherence for a mesoscopic system (with $N$ quantum states) which is coupled to an environment. When the Hamiltonian of the system commutes with the total Hamiltonian, one has "adiabatic decoherence", which yields N-1 time-independent combinations of the reduced density matrix elements. In the presence of a magnetic flux, one can measure circulating currents around loops in the system even at long times, and use them to retrieve information on the initial state. For N=2, we demonstrate that partial decoherence can happen only under adiabatic decoherence conditions. However, for $N>2$ we find partial decoherence even when the Hamiltonian of the system does not commute with the total Hamiltonian, and we obtain the general conditions for such non-adiabatic partial decoherence. For an electron moving on a ring, with $N>2$ single-level quantum dots, non-adiabatic partial decoherence can arise only when the total flux through the ring vanishes (or equals an integer number of flux quanta), and therefore there is no asymptotic circulating current.

DOI
10.1088/0031-8949/2012/t151/014018

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The coupling of a mesoscopic system with its environment usually causes total decoherence: at long times the reduced density matrix of the system evolves in time to a limit which is independent of its initial value, losing all the quantum information stored in its initial state. Under special circumstances, a subspace of the system's Hilbert space remains coherent, or "decoherence free", and the reduced density matrix approaches a non-trivial limit which contains information on its initial quantum state, despite the coupling to the environment. This situation is called "partial decoherence". Here we find the conditions for partial decoherence for a mesoscopic system (with NNN quantum states) which is coupled to an environment. When the Hamiltonian of the system commutes with the total Hamiltonian, one has "adiabatic decoherence", which yields N-1 time-independent combinations of the reduced density matrix elements. In the presence of a magnetic flux, one can measure circulating currents around loops in the system even at long times, and use them to retrieve information on the initial state. For N=2, we demonstrate that partial decoherence can happen only under adiabatic decoherence conditions. However, for N>2N>2N>2 we find partial decoherence even when the Hamiltonian of the system does not commute with the total Hamiltonian, and we obtain the general conditions for such non-adiabatic partial decoherence. For an electron moving on a ring, with N>2N>2N>2 single-level quantum dots, non-adiabatic partial decoherence can arise only when the total flux through the ring vanishes (or equals an integer number of flux quanta), and therefore there is no asymptotic circulating current.
The time evolution of a qubit, consisting of two single-level quantum dots, is studied in the presence of telegraph noise. The dots are connected by two tunneling paths with an Aharonov-Bohm flux enclosed between them. Under special symmetry conditions, which can be achieved by tuning gate voltages, there develops partial decoherence: at long times, the off-diagonal element of the reduced density matrix (in the basis of the two dot states) approaches a nonzero value, generating a circulating current around the loop. The flux dependence of this current contains full information on the initial quantum state of the qubit, even at infinite time. Small deviations from this symmetry yield a very slow exponential decay toward the fully decoherent limit. However, the amplitudes of this decay also contain the full information on the initial qubit state, measurable either via the current or via the occupations of the qubit dots.
A qubit (containing two quantum states, 1 and 2), is coupled to a control register (state 3), which is subject to telegraph noise. We study the time evolution of the density matrix ρρρ of an electron which starts in some coherent state on the qubit. At infinite time, ρρρ usually approaches the fully decoherent state, with ρnm=δnm/3ρ^{}_{nm}=δ^{}_{nm}/3ρnm​=δnm​/3. However, when the Hamiltonian is symmetric under 1↔21\leftrightarrow 21↔2, the element ρ12ρ^{}_{12}ρ12​ approaches a non-zero real value, implying a partial coherence of the asymptotic state. The asymptotic density matrix depends only on Re[ρ12(t=0)]{\rm Re}[ρ^{}_{12}(t=0)]Re[ρ12​(t=0)]. In several cases, the information stored on the qubit is protected from the noise.
Mesoscopic multiply connected samples such as conducting rings, cylinders or tori exhibit quantum size phenomena originating from the Aharonov–Bohm effects. One of the most spectacular phenomena is a persistent current [1] which is a direct manifestation of quantum phase coherence of the current carriers over a mesoscopic length scale. At a non-zero temperature, T > 0, the phase coherence of carriers is weakened and the samples exhibit the dissipative Ohmic contribution to the total current. There is a regime of temperatures in which both phase-coherent and dissipative Ohmic currents coexist. Such currents generate a magnetic flux. Its properties can be studied via modelling based on kinetic equations like Langevin equations [2]. The long-time, steady states of the magnetic flux are characterized by properties of the stationary probability density obtained from the corresponding Langevin equation. For instance, if the stationary probability density is bimodal, i.e., it has two maxima it reflects the possibility of occurrence of non-zero magnetic fluxes and in consequence the currents. One can notice an obvious analogy to the Josephson-based flux qubits [3]. There are serious advantages for using non-superconducting samples like rings as a building blocks for qubit storage because due to a small size they seem to be more stable with respect to decoherence and dephasing [4]. For higher temperatures, when __________
The dynamical evolution of a quantum register of arbitrary length coupled to an environment of arbitrary coherence length is predicted within a relevant model of decoherence. The results are reported for quantum bits (qubits) coupling individually to different environments (``independent decoherence'') and qubits interacting collectively with the same reservoir (``collective decoherence''). In both cases, explicit decoherence functions are derived for any number of qubits. The decay of the coherences of the register is shown to strongly depend on the input states: We show that this sensitivity is a characteristic of both types of coupling (collective and independent) and not only of the collective coupling, as has been reported previously. A nontrivial behavior (``recoherence'') is found in the decay of the off-diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix in the specific situation of independent decoherence. Our results lead to the identification of decoherence-free states in the collective decoherence limit. These states belong to subspaces of the system's Hilbert space that do not get entangled with the environment, making them ideal elements for the engineering of ``noiseless'' quantum codes. We also discuss the relations between decoherence of the quantum register and computational complexity based on the dynamical results obtained for the register density matrix.
Two initially correlated coherent states, each interacting with its own independent dissipative environment, exhibit a sudden transition from classical to quantum decoherence. This change in the dynamics is a turning point in the decoherence in the sense that depending on the average number of photons of each harmonic oscillator, decoherence can even be suppressed. Indeed, the quantum state is time independent for a time span in the mesoscopic regime, revealing a decoherence-free subspace. Furthermore, the absence of decoherence is manifested in the apparition of a metastable pointer-state basis.
The superconducting flux qubit has two quantum states with opposite currents which generate different magnetic fields. Environment of nuclear spins can find out the magnetic field after a decoherence time ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0}$ inversely proportional to the magnetic field and the square root of the number of spins. When the Hamiltonian of the qubit drives fast coherent Rabi oscillations between the states with opposite current, then the magnetic field is flipped at a constant rate $\ensuremath{\omega}$ and the decoherence time $\ensuremath{\tau}=\ensuremath{\omega}{\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0}^{2}$ is much longer than ${\ensuremath{\tau}}_{0}$. However, on closer inspection decoherence actually takes place on two time scales. The long time $\ensuremath{\tau}$ is a time of full decoherence but a part of quantum coherence is lost already after the much shorter time $\ensuremath{\pi}∕\ensuremath{\omega}$. This fast partial decoherence biases coherent flux oscillations towards the initial flux direction and it can affect performance of the superconducting devices as qubits.