Exchange of information between a quantum system and its surrounding environment plays a fundamental role in the study of the dynamics of open quantum systems. Here we discuss the role of the information exchange in the non-Markovian behavior of dynamical quantum processes following the decoherence approach, where we consider a quantum system that is initially correlated with its measurement apparatus, which in turn interacts with the environment. We introduce a way of looking at the information exchange between the system and environment using the quantum loss, which is shown to be closely related to the measure of non-Markovianity based on the quantum mutual information. We also extend the results of Fanchini et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 210402 (2014)] in several directions, providing a more detailed investigation of the use of the accessible information for quantifying the backflow of information from the environment to the system. Moreover, we reveal a clear conceptual relation between the entanglement- and mutual-information-based measures of non-Markovianity in terms of the quantum loss and accessible information. We compare different ways of studying the information flow in two theoretical examples. We also present experimental results on the investigation of the quantum loss and accessible information for a two-level system undergoing a zero temperature amplitude damping process. We use an optical approach that allows full access to the state of the environment.
Exchange of information between a quantum system and its surrounding environment plays a fundamental role in the study of the dynamics of open quantum systems. Here we discuss the role of the information exchange in the non-Markovian behavior of dynamical quantum processes following the decoherence approach, where we consider a quantum system that is initially correlated with its measurement apparatus, which in turn interacts with the environment. We introduce a way of looking at the information exchange between the system and environment using the quantum loss, which is shown to be closely related to the measure of non-Markovianity based on the quantum mutual information. We also extend the results of Fanchini et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 210402 (2014)] in several directions, providing a more detailed investigation of the use of the accessible information for quantifying the backflow of information from the environment to the system. Moreover, we reveal a clear conceptual relation between the entanglement- and mutual-information-based measures of non-Markovianity in terms of the quantum loss and accessible information. We compare different ways of studying the information flow in two theoretical examples. We also present experimental results on the investigation of the quantum loss and accessible information for a two-level system undergoing a zero temperature amplitude damping process. We use an optical approach that allows full access to the state of the environment.
The degree of non-Markovianity of quantum processes has been characterized in several different ways in the recent literature. However, the relationship between the non-Markovian behavior and the flow of information between the system and the environment through an entropic measure has not been yet established. We propose an entanglement-based measure of non-Markovianity by employing the concept of assisted knowledge, where the environment E, acquires information about a system S, by means of its measurement apparatus A. The assisted knowledge, based on the accessible information in terms of von Neumann entropy, monotonically increases in time for all Markovian quantum processes. We demonstrate that the signatures of non-Markovianity can be captured by the nonmonotonic behavior of the assisted knowledge. We explore this scenario for a two-level system undergoing a relaxation process, through an experimental implementation using an optical approach that allows full access to the state of the environment.
The basic features of the dynamics of open quantum systems, such as the dissipation of energy, the decay of coherences, the relaxation to an equilibrium or non-equilibrium stationary state, and the transport of excitations in complex structures are of central importance in many applications of quantum mechanics. The theoretical description, analysis and control of non-Markovian quantum processes play an important role in this context. While in a Markovian process an open system irretrievably loses information to its surroundings, non-Markovian processes feature a flow of information from the environment back to the open system, which implies the presence of memory effects and represents the key property of non-Markovian quantum behavior. Here, we review recent ideas developing a general mathematical definition for non-Markoviantiy in the quantum regime and a measure for the degree of memory effects in the dynamics of open systems which are based on the exchange of information between system and environment. We further study the dynamical effects induced by the presence of system-environment correlations in the total initial state and design suitable methods to detect such correlations through local measurements on the open system.
In the study of open quantum systems, information exchange between system and its surrounding environment plays an eminent and important role in analysing the dynamics of open quantum system. In this work, by making use of the quantum information theory and intrinsic properties such as \emph{entropy exchange}, \emph{coherent information} and using the notion of \emph{quantum loss} as a criterion of the amount of lost information, we will propose a new witness, based on information exchange, to detect non-Markovianity. Also a measure for determining the degree of non-Markovianity, will be introduced by using our witness. The characteristic of non-Markovianity is clarified by means of our witness, and we emphasize that this measure is constructed based on the loss of information or in other word the rate of \emph{quantum loss} in the environment. It is defined in term of reducing correlation between system and ancillary. Actually, our focus is on the information which be existed in the environment and it has been entered to the environment due to its interaction with the system. Remarkably, due to choosing the situation which the "system +ancillary" in maximal entangled pure state, optimization procedure does not need in calculation of our measure, such that the degree of non-Markovianity is computed analytically by straightforward calculations.
In the study of open quantum systems, memory effects are usually ignored, and this leads to dynamical semigroups and Markovian dynamics. However, in practice, non-Markovian dynamics is the rule rather than the exception. With the recent emergence of quantum information theory, there is a flurry of investigations of non-Markovian dynamics, and several significant measures for non-Markovianity are introduced from various perspectives such as deviation from divisibility, information exchange between a system and its environment, or entanglement with the environment. In this work, by exploiting the correlations flow between a system and an arbitrary ancillary, we propose a considerably intuitive measure for non-Markovianity by use of correlations as quantified by the quantum mutual information rather than entanglement. The fundamental properties, physical significance, and differences and relations with existing measures for non-Markovianity are elucidated. The measure captures quite directly and deeply the characteristics of non-Markovianity from the perspective of information. A simplified version based on Jamio\l{}kowski-Choi isomorphism which encodes operations via bipartite states and does not involve any optimization is also proposed.
We propose an approach to measuring non-Markovianity of an open two-level system from quantum coherence perspective including l1 norm of coherence and quantum relative entropy of coherence, and derive corresponding non-Markovian conditions. Further, as a particular application, non-Markovian conditions of an open two-level system undergoing phase damping channel, random unitary channel and amplitude damping channel, respectively are investigated. Specifically speaking, for the three channels we obtain non-Markovian conditions based on l1 norm of coherence at any initial state of system, and find that non-Markovian conditions are the same as the conditions of other measurements, i.e., information back-flow, divisibility and quantum mutual entropy for the phase damping channel and amplitude damping channel, but non-Markovian conditions new and different from the conditions of other measurements for random unitary channel. On the other hand, for phase damping channel we obtain non-Markovian conditions based on quantum relative entropy of coherence at any initial state of system, which are the same as the conditions of other measures, i.e., information back-flow, divisibility and quantum mutual entropy. However, for the random unitary channel and amplitude damping channel we obtain non-Markovian conditions at maximally coherent state of system.
Many quantum systems display Markovian and non-Markovian behaviors with the information flow and backflow between the system and the surrounding environment. In this paper, we introduce a definition of the dynamics of open quantum systems called information trapping, which is a special case of the information flow. We show that under specific conditions, the information flow can exhibit behavior beyond Markovian or non-Markovian system dynamics. The physical reason behind this phenomenon may arise from the entanglement between the system and the environment, such that the rates of entangling and disentangling can equalize over time, influenced by the quantum memory of the system and environmental decoherence effects. This proposal is investigated by considering some witnesses of the behavior of the system dynamics such as fidelity, trace distance, the Holevo quantity, and Hilbert-Schmidt speed in the quantum teleportation and dense coding protocols based on the open quantum system consisting of an XXZ chain Heisenberg affected by intrinsic decoherence. The main achievement of this work is focused on facilitating access to faithful quantum communication.