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arXiv:1504.07373 · Physical Review A

Hierarchy of non-Markovianity and k -divisibility phase diagram of quantum processes in open systems

Hongbin Chen, Jiun‐Yi Lien, Guang-Yin Chen, Yueh-Nan Chen

Published Oct 9, 2015• 21 citations
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Abstract

In recent years, many efforts have been devoted to the construction of a proper measure of quantum non-Markovianity. However, those proposed measures are shown to be at variance in different situations. In this work, we utilize the theory of $k$-positive maps to generalize a hierarchy of $k$ divisibility and develop a powerful tool, called $k$-divisibility phase diagram, to show the landscape of non-Markovianity. This allows one to study different measures in a unified framework and provides a deeper insight into the nature of quantum non-Markovianity. By exploring the phase diagram with several paradigms, we can explain the origin of the discrepancy between three frequently used measures and find the condition under which these measures coincide with each other.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.92.042105

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In recent years, many efforts have been devoted to the construction of a proper measure of quantum non-Markovianity. However, those proposed measures are shown to be at variance in different situations. In this work, we utilize the theory of kkk-positive maps to generalize a hierarchy of kkk divisibility and develop a powerful tool, called kkk-divisibility phase diagram, to show the landscape of non-Markovianity. This allows one to study different measures in a unified framework and provides a deeper insight into the nature of quantum non-Markovianity. By exploring the phase diagram with several paradigms, we can explain the origin of the discrepancy between three frequently used measures and find the condition under which these measures coincide with each other.
We discuss the conceptually different definitions used for the non-Markovianity of classical and quantum processes. The well-established definition for non-Markovianity of a classical stochastic process represents a condition on the Kolmogorov hierarchy of the n-point joint probability distributions. Since this definition cannot be transferred to the quantum regime, quantum non-Markovianity has recently been defined and quantified in terms of the underlying quantum dynamical map, using either its divisibility properties or the behavior of the trace distance between pairs of initial states. Here, we investigate and compare these definitions and their relations to the classical notion of non-Markovianity by employing a large class of non-Markovian processes, known as semi-Markov processes, which admit a natural extension to the quantum case. A number of specific physical examples is constructed which allow to study the basic features of the classical and the quantum definitions and to evaluate explicitly the measures for quantum non-Markovianity. Our results clearly demonstrate several fundamental distinctions between the classical and the quantum notion of non-Markovianity, as well as between the various quantum measures for non-Markovianity.
In the theory of open quantum systems, divisibility of the system dynamical maps is related to memory effects in the dynamics. By decomposing the system Hilbert space as a direct sum of several Hilbert spaces, we study the relationship among the corresponding dynamical maps. It is shown that if the dynamical maps of the open system possess a chain of invariant subspaces, there exists a divisibility hierarchy for their corresponding dynamics. Two classes of examples are given for illustrating these hierarchical structures. One is the pure-dephasing dynamics, and the other is the decay dynamics. Our results offer a systematic approach to obtaining the divisibility conditions and non-Markovian witnesses for these dynamics. Moreover, as a new way of decomposing open quantum systems, it is worthy of further study.
Divisibility of dynamical maps is a central notion in the study of quantum non-Markovianity, providing a natural framework to characterize memory effects via time-local master equations. In this work, we generalize the notion of divisibility of quantum dynamical maps from the Schrödinger to the Heisenberg picture. While the two pictures are equivalent at the level of physical predictions, we show that the divisibility properties of the corresponding dual maps are, in general, not equivalent. This inequivalence originates from the distinction between left and right generators of time-local master equations, which interchange roles under duality. We demonstrate that Schrödinger and Heisenberg divisibility are distinct concepts by constructing explicit dynamics divisible only in one picture. Furthermore, we introduce a quantifier for the violation of Heisenberg P-divisibility, analogous to the trace-distance-based measure of non-Markovianity, and provide it with an operational interpretation in terms of the guessing probability between effects. Our results show that Heisenberg divisibility is an independent witness of memory effects and highlight the need to consider both pictures when characterizing non-Markovian quantum dynamics.
Abstract Based on the nonincreasing property of quantum coherence via skew information under incoherent completely positive and trace-preserving maps, we propose a non-Markovianity measure for open quantum processes. As applications, by applying the proposed measure to some typical noisy channels, we find that it is equivalent to the three previous measures of non-Markovianity for phase damping and amplitude damping channels, i.e. the measures based on the quantum trace distance, dynamical divisibility, and quantum mutual information. For the random unitary channel, it is equivalent to the non-Markovianity measure based on l 1 norm of coherence for a class of output states and it is incompletely equivalent to the measure based on dynamical divisibility. We also use the modified Tsallis relative entropy of coherence to detect the non-Markovianity of dynamics of quantum open systems, the results show that the modified Tsallis relative entropy of coherence are more comfortable than the original Tsallis relative entropy of coherence for small .
Understanding whether the features of open quantum dynamics are genuinely quantum remains a central challenge in quantum dynamics. Even though the non-Markovian behavior of quantum dynamics has been widely investigated across different settings, there is still no consensus on which properties of a dynamics reflect genuine quantum features and which arise from classical or non-genuine quantum sources. In this review, we provide detailed information on recent developments in characterizing quantum non-Markovianity based on information backflow and the nature of its origin. We also present a survey on how various approaches separate classical and quantum contributions, as well as how they define operational tasks that reveal genuine quantum non-Markovianity. We analyze several frameworks, including state-distinguishability -based, channel-based (``CP-divisibility''), and process-tensor methods. For each framework, we outline the underlying physical motivation, the criteria proposed to distinguish genuine quantum non-Markovianity from practical or apparent memory effects. We further compare different approaches and their strengths and limitations. The review aims to clarify the conceptual and operational aspects of quantum non-Markovian processes based on their nature and to provide a foundation for future research on quantum non-Markovianity and its role in advancing quantum information science and technology.
Markovian approximation is a widely-employed idea in the descriptions of the dynamics of open quantum systems. Although it is usually claimed to be a concept inspired by classical Markovianity, the physical meaning of this concept, however, is vague. In this thesis, I compare the descriptions of classical stochastic processes and open quantum systems, and show that those inherent differences lead to the non-trivial problem of characterizing quantum non-Markovianity. With various examples, I argue that the current most often used definitions of quantumMarkovianity in the literature do not fully capture the memoryless property of OQSs. To address this issue, I take a different approach by studying a host of Markov-related concepts in the quantum regime. Some of these concepts have long been used in quantum theory, while others are first proposed in this thesis. I define all these concepts under a unified framework, which allows one to rigorously build hierarchy relations among them. In this sense, quantum non-Markovianity is highly context-dependent. The results in this thesis, summarized as a hierarchy figure, are expected to bring clarity to the nature of quantumnon-Markovianity.