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arXiv:1512.02861 · Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Zooming in on quantum trajectories

Michel Bauer, Denis Bernard, Antoine Tilloy

Published Jan 29, 2016• 22 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract We propose to use the effect of measurements instead of their number to study the time evolution of quantum systems under monitoring. This time redefinition acts like a microscope which blows up the inner details of seemingly instantaneous transitions like quantum jumps. In the simple example of a continuously monitored qubit coupled to a heat bath, we show that this procedure provides well defined and simple evolution equations in an otherwise singular strong monitoring limit. We show that there exists anomalous observable localized on sharp transitions which can only be resolved with our new effective time. We apply our simplified description to study the competition between information extraction and dissipation in the evolution of the linear entropy. Finally, we show that the evolution of the new time as a function of the real time is closely related to a stable Lévy process of index 1/2.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8113/49/10/10lt01

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Abstract We propose to use the effect of measurements instead of their number to study the time evolution of quantum systems under monitoring. This time redefinition acts like a microscope which blows up the inner details of seemingly instantaneous transitions like quantum jumps. In the simple example of a continuously monitored qubit coupled to a heat bath, we show that this procedure provides well defined and simple evolution equations in an otherwise singular strong monitoring limit. We show that there exists anomalous observable localized on sharp transitions which can only be resolved with our new effective time. We apply our simplified description to study the competition between information extraction and dissipation in the evolution of the linear entropy. Finally, we show that the evolution of the new time as a function of the real time is closely related to a stable Lévy process of index 1/2.
Abstract The dynamics of a quantum system, undergoing unitary evolution and continuous monitoring, can be described in term of quantum trajectories. Although the averaged state fully characterizes expectation values, the entire ensemble of stochastic trajectories goes beyond simple linear observables, keeping a more attentive description of the entire dynamics. Here we go beyond the Lindblad dynamics and study the probability distribution of the expectation value of a given observable over the possible quantum trajectories. The measurements are applied to the entire system, having the effect of projecting the system into a product state. We develop an analytical tool to evaluate this probability distribution at any time t. We illustrate our approach by analyzing two paradigmatic examples: a single qubit subjected to magnetization measurements, and a free hopping particle subjected to position measurements.
A quantum system subjected to a strong continuous monitoring undergoes quantum jumps. This very-well-known fact hides a neglected subtlety: sharp scale-invariant fluctuations invariably decorate the jump process, even in the limit where the measurement rate is very large. This article is devoted to the quantitative study of these remaining fluctuations, which we call spikes, and to a discussion of their physical status. We start by introducing a classical model where the origin of these fluctuations is more intuitive, and then jump to the quantum realm where their existence is less intuitive. We compute the exact distribution of the spikes for a continuously monitored qubit. We conclude by discussing their physical and operational relevance.
Entanglement is a key resource in quantum information. It can be destroyed or sometimes created by interactions with a reservoir. In recent years, much attention has been devoted to the phenomena of entanglement sudden death and sudden birth, i.e., the sudden disappearance or revival of entanglement at finite times resulting from a coupling of the quantum system to its environment [1, 2, 3]. We investigate the evolution of the entanglement of noninteracting qubits coupled to reservoirs under monitoring of the reservoirs by means of continuous measurements. Because of these measurements, the qubits remain at all times in a pure state, which evolves randomly. To each measurement result (or "realization") corresponds a quantum trajectory in the Hilbert space of the qubits. We show that for two qubits coupled to independent baths subjected to local measurements, the average of the qubits' concurrence over all quantum trajectories is either constant or decays exponentially. The corresponding decay rate depends on the measurement scheme only. This result contrasts with the entanglement sudden death phenomenon exhibited by the qubits' density matrix in the absence of measurements. Our analysis applies to arbitrary quantum jump dynamics (photon counting) as well as to quantum state diffusion (homodyne or heterodyne detections) in the Markov limit. We discuss the best measurement schemes to protect the entanglement of the qubits. We also analyze the case of two qubits coupled to a common bath. Then, the average concurrence can vanish at discrete times and may coincide with the concurrence of the density matrix. The results explained in this article have been presented during the "Fifth International Workshop DICE2010" by the first author and have been the subject of a prior publication [4].
We revisit aspects of monitoring observables with continuous spectrum in a quantum system subject to dissipative (Lindbladian) or conservative (Hamiltonian) evolutions. After recalling some of the salient features of the case of pure monitoring, we deal with the case when monitoring is in competition with a Lindbladian evolution. We show that the strong measurement limit leads to a diffusion on the spectrum of the observable. For the case with competition between observation and Hamiltonian dynamics, we exhibit a scaling limit in which the crossover between the classical regime and a diffusive regime can be analyzed in details.
Dissipation generally leads to the decoherence of a quantum state. In contrast, numerous recent proposals have illustrated that dissipation can also be tailored to stabilize many-body entangled quantum states. While the focus of these works has been primarily on engineering the nonequilibrium steady state, we investigate the buildup of entanglement in the quantum trajectories. Specifically, we analyze the competition between two different dissipation channels arising from two incompatible continuous monitoring protocols. The first protocol locks the phase of neighboring sites upon registering a quantum jump, thereby generating a long-range entanglement through the system, while the second destroys the coherence via a dephasing mechanism. By studying the unraveling of stochastic quantum trajectories associated with the continuous monitoring protocols, we present a transition for the scaling of the averaged trajectory entanglement entropies, from critical scaling to area-law behavior. Our work provides an alternative perspective on the measurement-induced phase transition: the measurement can be viewed as monitoring and registering quantum jumps, offering an intriguing extension of these phase transitions through the long-established realm of quantum optics.
Recent years have witnessed major progress in the understanding of monitored quantum dynamics, an open quantum setting where the environment is a measurement apparatus that probes the system locally. For the resulting quantum trajectory, unitary evolution and local measurements have competing tendencies in the building of quantum correlations: while the coherent interactions in the former increase the entanglement, the resolving nature of the local measurement collapses the state of the system. Here, the authors study the interplay of monitoring and system dynamics by focusing on the monitored quantum Ising chain as the measurement strength is varied, going from the regime of weak detection, corresponding to the limit of infinite small jumps, to the case of post-selected no-jump case. A sharp transition is found between a logarithmic law phase to an area law phase for the entanglement entropy, which occurs at the same value of the measurement rate in the two limiting situations.