The system-environment interaction is simulated by light propagating in coupled photonic waveguides. The profile of the electromagnetic field provides intuitive physical insight to study the Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics. The transition from non-Markovian to Markovian process is demonstrated by increasing the size of the environment, as the energy evolution changes from oscillation to exponential decay and the revival period increases. Moreover, the dynamical decoupling with a sequence of phase modulations is introduced to such a photonic system to form a band structure in the time dimension, where the energy dissipation can be significantly accelerated or inhibited. It opens the possibility to tune the dissipation in a photonic system, similar to the dynamic decoupling of spins.
The system-environment interaction is simulated by light propagating in coupled photonic waveguides. The profile of the electromagnetic field provides intuitive physical insight to study the Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics. The transition from non-Markovian to Markovian process is demonstrated by increasing the size of the environment, as the energy evolution changes from oscillation to exponential decay and the revival period increases. Moreover, the dynamical decoupling with a sequence of phase modulations is introduced to such a photonic system to form a band structure in the time dimension, where the energy dissipation can be significantly accelerated or inhibited. It opens the possibility to tune the dissipation in a photonic system, similar to the dynamic decoupling of spins.
Non-Markovian dynamics go beyond the Markovian approximation by capturing memory effects and information backflow in open quantum systems, which are crucial for describing realistic physical processes. In this work, we study the exact non-Markovian dynamics of a driven cavity coupled to an anisotropic three-dimensional photonic-crystal environment via counterrotating-wave interactions. We derive an exact analytical expression for the cavity amplitude satisfying the integro-differential equation, which includes the contributions of the bound states outside the continuum and the dissipative parts with the continuum spectrum. Based on the characteristic function method, we derive the exact non-Markovian master equation for the cavity, which contributes to the gain of the cavity. We give the physical origin of non-Markovian gain in the presence of bound states in the system consisting of cavity and environment, which has no Markovian counterparts due to the nonexponential gain in the non-Markovian structured environment. We find that three different types of bound states can be formed in the system, containing one bound state with no inversion of photon number, two bound states with the periodic equal-amplitude oscillation, and the gain with two complex roots without the bound states formation. We derive a current equation including the source from the driving field, the transient current induced by the change in the number of photons, and the two-photon current caused by the counterrotating-wave term. The results are compared with those given by the rotating-wave interactions and extended to a more general quantum network involving an arbitrary number of coupled cavities. Our findings may pave the way for a deeper understanding of non-Markovian dynamics with gain in quantum networks involving counterrotating-wave effects.
Spontaneous emission of an excited atom in a featureless continuum of electromagnetic modes is a fundamental process in quantum electrodynamics associated with an exponential decay of the quantum emitter to its ground state accompanied by an irreversible emission of a photon. However, such a simple scenario is deeply modified when considering a "giant" atom, i.e., an atom whose dimension is larger than the wavelength of the emitted photon. In such an unconventional regime, non-Markovian effects and strong deviations from an exponential decay are observed owing to interference effects arising from nonlocal light-atom coupling. Here we suggest a photonic simulation of non-Markovian giant atom decay, based on light escape dynamics in an optical waveguide nonlocally coupled to a waveguide lattice. Major effects, such as nonexponential decay, enhancement, or slowing down of the decay, and formation of atom-field dark states can be emulated in this system.
Understanding the non-Markovian dynamics of dissipative processes induced by memory effects of the environment is a fundamental subject of open quantum systems. Because of the complexity of open quantum systems, e.g., the multiple energy scales involving that of the system, the environment, and their mutual coupling, it is generally a challenging task to characterize the relationship among the parameters of the system dynamics and the reservoir spectra. For the two-level spontaneous emission model within structured environments, it was shown in a recent literature (Opt. Lett. 38, 3650) that a functional relation could be established between the asymptotically non-decaying population and the spectral density of the reservoir as the system undergoes a long-time evolution. It hence renders a distinct perspective to look into the character of long-lived quantum coherence in the corresponding non-Markovian process. This article is devoted to further investigate the phenomena of limit cycle oscillations possibly occurring in such non-Markovian dissipative systems in a long-time evolution. For a two-level system subjected to an environment with Ohmic class spectra, due to the presence of a unique bound-state mode of the system, the evolution trajectory of the given initial states will converge to a limit cycle in the Bloch space. The dependence of the radius and the location of the limit cycle on the spectral density function of the reservoir are manifested by virtue of the described functional relation. For the model subjected to a photonic crystal environment with multiple bands, our studies reveal that, owing to the presence of two or more bound states, the evolution trajectory of the system will converge to a toric curve of a paraboloid in the Bloch space and the phenomena of periodic or quasi-periodic oscillations could exhibit. While the equation of the parabolic curve is fully determined by the initial values of the state vector in the Bloch space, our results reveal that the scope of the evolution trajectory inside the toric curve is related to the spectral density of the reservoir and their quantified relation is distinctly characterized. Finally, the asymptotic dynamics of the correlations of a two-qubit system is discussed when it is subjected locally to the non-Markovian dissipative process.
Quantum speedup of an open quantum system can be induced by the non-Markovian effect of the environment. Although an environment with a higher degree of non-Markovianity may seem like it should cause a faster speed of quantum evolution, this seemingly intuitive thinking may not always be correct. To clarify this point, we give a mechanism for controlling speedup of a single qubit that is coupled to a hierarchical photonic-crystal (PC) environment, which contains a defect single-mode cavity and a semi-infinite one-dimensional (1D) waveguide. Via studying the dynamics of the qubit, we reveal that with a judicious choice of the qubit-cavity coupling strength and the memory time of the waveguide environment, a speed-up evolution can be achieved. In particular, we found that the quantum speedup is not entirely attributed to the non-Markovianity, but to the increase of the total amount of flow information. That is the intrinsic physical reason that the hierarchical environment may induce the speed-up process. Our results may open new perspectives for detecting quantum speedup in realistic environments.
The simulation of open quantum dynamics has recently allowed the direct investigation of the features of system-environment interaction and of their consequences on the evolution of a quantum system. Such interaction threatens the quantum properties of the system, spoiling them and causing the phenomenon of decoherence. Sometimes however a coherent exchange of information takes place between system and environment, memory effects arise and the dynamics of the system becomes non-Markovian. Here we report the experimental realisation of a non-Markovian process where system and environment are coupled through a simulated transverse Ising model. By engineering the evolution in a photonic quantum simulator, we demonstrate the role played by system-environment correlations in the emergence of memory effects.
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.