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arXiv:1510.01677 · Physical Review A

Microscopic derivation of open quantum walks

Ilya Sinayskiy, Francesco Petruccione

Published Sep 8, 2015• 19 citations
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Abstract

Open quantum walks (OQWs) are exclusively driven by dissipation and are formulated as completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) maps on underlying graphs. The microscopic derivation of discrete and continuous-in-time OQWs is presented. It is assumed that connected nodes are weakly interacting via a common bath. The resulting reduced master equation of the quantum walker on the lattice is in the generalized master equation form. The time discretization of the generalized master equation leads to the OQW formalism. The explicit form of the transition operators establishes a connection between dynamical properties of the OQWs and thermodynamical characteristics of the environment. The derivation is demonstrated for the examples of the OQW on a circle of nodes and on a finite chain of nodes. For both examples, a transition between diffusive and ballistic quantum trajectories is observed and found to be related to the temperature of the bath.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.92.032105

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Open quantum walks (OQWs) are exclusively driven by dissipation and are formulated as completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) maps on underlying graphs. The microscopic derivation of discrete and continuous-in-time OQWs is presented. It is assumed that connected nodes are weakly interacting via a common bath. The resulting reduced master equation of the quantum walker on the lattice is in the generalized master equation form. The time discretization of the generalized master equation leads to the OQW formalism. The explicit form of the transition operators establishes a connection between dynamical properties of the OQWs and thermodynamical characteristics of the environment. The derivation is demonstrated for the examples of the OQW on a circle of nodes and on a finite chain of nodes. For both examples, a transition between diffusive and ballistic quantum trajectories is observed and found to be related to the temperature of the bath.
Open quantum walks (OQWs) describe a quantum walker on an underlying graph whose dynamics is purely driven by dissipation and decoherence. Mathematically, they are formulated as completely positive trace preserving (CPTP) maps on the space of density matrices for the walker on the graph. Any microscopically derived OQW must include the possibility of remaining on the same site on the graph when the map is applied. We extend the CPTP map to describe a lazy OQW. We derive a central limit theorem for lazy OQWs on a ddd-dimensional lattice, where the distribution converges to a Gaussian. We show that the properties of this Gaussian computed using conventional methods agree with the general formulas derived from our central limit theorem.
Open quantum walks (OQWs) are a new type of quantum walks which are entirely driven by the dissipative interaction with external environments and are formulated as completely positive trace-preserving maps on graphs. A generalized quantum optical scheme for implementing OQWs that includes non-zero temperature of the environment is suggested. In the proposed quantum optical scheme, a two-level atom plays the role of the "walker", and the Fock states of the cavity mode correspond to the lattice sites for the "walker". Using the small unitary rotations approach the effective dynamics of the system is shown to be an OQW. For the chosen set of parameters, an increase in the temperature of the environment causes the system to reach the asymptotic distribution much faster compared to the scheme proposed earlier where the temperature of the environment is zero. For this case the asymptotic distribution is given by a steady Gaussian distribution.
Open quantum systems interact with their environment, leading to nonunitary dynamics. We investigate the thermodynamics of linear Open Quantum Walks (OQWs), a class of quantum walks whose dynamics is entirely driven by the environment. We define an equilibrium temperature, identify a population inversion near a finite critical value of a control parameter, analyze the thermalization process, and develop the statistical mechanics needed to describe the thermodynamical properties of linear OQWs. We also study nonequilibrium thermodynamics by analyzing the time evolution of entropy, energy, and temperature, while providing analytical tools to understand the system's evolution as it converges to the thermalized state. We examine the validity of the second and third laws of thermodynamics in this setting. Finally, we employ these developments to shed light on dissipative quantum computation within the OQW framework.
Open Quantum Brownian Motion (OQBM) was introduced as a scaling limit of discrete-time open quantum walks. This limit defines a new class of quantum Brownian motion, which incorporates both the external and internal degrees of freedom of the Brownian particle. We consider a weakly driven Brownian particle confined in a harmonic potential and dissipatively coupled to a thermal bath. Applying the rotating wave approximation (RWA) to the system-bath interaction Hamiltonian, we derive a completely positive Born-Markov master equation for the reduced dynamics. We express the resulting master equation in the coordinate representation and, utilizing the adiabatic elimination of fast variables, derive a completely positive hybrid quantum-classical master equation that defines OQBM. We illustrate the resulting dynamics using examples of initial Gaussian and non-Gaussian distributions of the OQBM walker. Both examples reveal the emergence of Gaussian distributions in the limiting behavior of the OQBM dynamics, which closely matches that of the standard OQBM. With the help of the obtained OQBM master equation, we derive the equations for the nnn-th moments and the cumulants of the position distribution of the open Brownian walker. We subsequently solve these equations numerically for Gaussian initial distributions across various parameter regimes. Notably, we find that the third-order cumulant is nonzero, indicating that the dynamics' intrinsic generator is non-Gaussian.