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arXiv:1303.6304 · Journal of Mathematical Physics

Rapid mixing implies exponential decay of correlations

Michael J. Kastoryano, Jens Eisert

Published Oct 1, 2013• 56 citations
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Abstract

We provide an analysis of the correlation properties of spin and fermionic systems on a lattice evolving according to open system dynamics generated by a local primitive Liouvillian. We show that if the Liouvillian has a spectral gap which is independent of the system size, then the correlations between local observables decay exponentially as a function of the distance between their supports. We prove, furthermore, that if the Log-Sobolev constant is independent of the system size, then the system satisfies clustering of correlations in the mutual information—a much more stringent form of correlation decay. As a consequence, in the latter case we get an area law (with logarithmic corrections) for the mutual information. As a further corollary, we obtain a stability theorem for local distant perturbations. We also demonstrate that gapped free-fermionic systems exhibit clustering of correlations in the covariance and in the mutual information. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the classical simulation of open quantum systems with matrix-product operators and the robust dissipative preparation of topologically ordered states of lattice spin systems.

DOI
10.1063/1.4822481

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We provide an analysis of the correlation properties of spin and fermionic systems on a lattice evolving according to open system dynamics generated by a local primitive Liouvillian. We show that if the Liouvillian has a spectral gap which is independent of the system size, then the correlations between local observables decay exponentially as a function of the distance between their supports. We prove, furthermore, that if the Log-Sobolev constant is independent of the system size, then the system satisfies clustering of correlations in the mutual information—a much more stringent form of correlation decay. As a consequence, in the latter case we get an area law (with logarithmic corrections) for the mutual information. As a further corollary, we obtain a stability theorem for local distant perturbations. We also demonstrate that gapped free-fermionic systems exhibit clustering of correlations in the covariance and in the mutual information. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the classical simulation of open quantum systems with matrix-product operators and the robust dissipative preparation of topologically ordered states of lattice spin systems.
We provide an analysis of the correlation properties of spin and fermionic systems on a lattice evolving according to open system dynamics generated by a local primitive Liouvillian. We show that if the Liouvillian has a spectral gap which is independent of the system size, then the correlations between local observables decay exponentially as a function of the distance between their supports. We prove, furthermore, that if the Log-Sobolev constant is independent of the system size, then the system satisfies clustering of correlations in the mutual information ‒ a much more stringent form of correlation decay. As a consequence, in the latter case we get an area law (with logarithmic corrections) for the mutual information. As a further corollary, we obtain a stability theorem for local distant perturbations. We also demonstrate that gapped free-fermionic systems exhibit clustering of correlations in the covariance and in the mutual information. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the classical simulation of open quantum systems with matrix-product operators and the robust dissipative preparation of topologically ordered states of lattice spin systems.
Abstract Quantum systems in thermal equilibrium are described using Gibbs states. The correlations in such states determine how difficult it is to describe or simulate them. In this article, we show that if the Gibbs state of a quantum system satisfies that each of its marginals admits a local effective Hamiltonian with short-range interactions, then it satisfies a mixing condition, that is, for any regions A , C the distance of the reduced state ρAC\rho _{AC}ρAC​ ρ AC on these regions to the product of its marginals, $$ \left\| \rho _{AC} \rho _A^{-1} \otimes \rho _C^{-1} - \mathbbm {1}_{AC} \right\| \, , $$ ρ AC ρ A - 1 ⊗ ρ C - 1 - 1 AC , decays exponentially with the distance between regions A and C . This mixing condition is stronger than other commonly studied measures of correlation. In particular, it implies the exponential decay of the mutual information between distant regions. The mixing condition has been used, for example, to prove positive log-Sobolev constants. On the way, we prove that the the condition regarding local effective Hamiltonian is satisfied if the Hamiltonian only has commuting interactions which also commute with every marginal of their products. The proof of these results employs a variety of tools such as Araki’s expansionals, quantum belief propagation and cluster expansions.
We study the relation between the spectral gap above the ground state and the decay of the correlations in the ground state in quantum spin and fermion systems with short-range interactions on a wide class of lattices. We prove that, if two observables anticommute with each other at large distance, then the nonvanishing spectral gap implies exponential decay of the corresponding correlation. When two observables commute with each other at large distance, the connected correlation function decays exponentially under the gap assumption. If the observables behave as a vector under the U(1) rotation of a global symmetry of the system, we use previous results on the large distance decay of the correlation function to show the stronger statement that the correlation function itself, rather than just the connected correlation function, decays exponentially under the gap assumption on a lattice with a certain self-similarity in (fractal) dimensions D < 2. In particular, if the system is translationally invariant in one of the spatial directions, then this self-similarity condition is automatically satisfied. We also treat systems with long-range, power-law decaying interactions. Spectral Gap and Exponential Decay of Correlations 2 1
The thermal equilibrium properties of physical systems can be described using Gibbs states. It is therefore of great interest to know when such states allow for an easy description. In particular, this is the case if correlations between distant regions are small. In this work, we consider 1D quantum spin systems with local, finite-range, translation-invariant interactions at any temperature. In this setting, we show that Gibbs states satisfy uniform exponential decay of correlations and, moreover, the mutual information between two regions decays exponentially with their distance, irrespective of the temperature. In order to prove the latter, we show that exponential decay of correlations of the infinite-chain thermal states, exponential uniform clustering and exponential decay of the mutual information are equivalent for 1D quantum spin systems with local, finite-range interactions at any temperature. In particular, Araki's seminal results yields that the three conditions hold in the translation-invariant case. The methods we use are based on the Belavkin-Staszewski relative entropy and on techniques developed by Araki. Moreover, we find that the Gibbs states of the systems we consider are superexponentially close to saturating the data-processing inequality for the Belavkin-Staszewski relative entropy.
We investigate the emergence of long-lived correlations in finite open quantum systems subject to collective dissipation. By analyzing the spectral properties of the Liouvillian superoperator for systems of up to N = 6 qubits, we observe exponential suppression of the spectral gap with system size: ∆(N) ∝ e−αN with α = 1.63 ± 0.05 and coefficient of determination R2 = 0.95. This behavior implies an exponential growth of relaxation times τ = 1/∆ and signals the onset of a dissipative phase transition in the thermodynamic limit. Complementary evidence is provided by data collapse under λ/N scaling, demonstrating collective superradiant behavior, and by the saturation of conditional mutual information, indicating the persistence of nonlocal correlations. Together, these results support a mechanism of symmetry-protected information confinement in driven-dissipative quantum systems
In this thesis we study properties of open quantum dissipative evolutions of spin systems on lattices described by Lindblad generators, in a particular regime that we denote rapid mixing. We consider dissipative evolutions with a unique fixed point, and which compress the whole space of input states into increasingly small neighborhoods of the fixed point. The time scale at which this compression takes place, or in other words the time we have to wait for any input state to become almost indistinguishable from the fixed point, is called the mixing time of the process. Rapid mixing is a condition on the scaling of this mixing time with the system size: if it is logarithmic, then we have rapid mixing. The main contribution of this thesis is to show that rapid mixing has profound implications for the corresponding system: it is stable against external perturbations and its fixed point satisfies an area law for mutual information.