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arXiv:1609.04158 · Scientific Reports

Quantum non-Markovianity induced by Anderson localization

Salvatore Lorenzo, Federico Lombardo, Francesco Ciccarello, G. Massimo Palma

Published Feb 16, 2017• 29 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

As discovered by P. W. Anderson, excitations do not propagate freely in a disordered lattice, but, due to destructive interference, they localise. As a consequence, when an atom interacts with a disordered lattice, one indeed observes a non-trivial excitation exchange between atom and lattice. Such non-trivial atomic dynamics will in general be characterised also by a non-trivial quantum information backflow, a clear signature of non-Markovian dynamics. To investigate the above scenario, we consider a quantum emitter, or atom, weakly coupled to a uniform coupled-cavity array (CCA). If initially excited, in the absence of disorder, the emitter undergoes a Markovian spontaneous emission by releasing all its excitation into the CCA (initially in its vacuum state). By introducing static disorder in the CCA the field normal modes become Anderson-localized, giving rise to a non-Markovian atomic dynamics. We show the existence of a functional relationship between a rigorous measure of quantum non-Markovianity and the CCA localization. We furthermore show that the average non-Markovianity of the atomic dynamics is well-described by a phenomenological model in which the atom is coupled, at the same time, to a single mode and to a standard - Markovian - dissipative bath.

DOI
10.1038/srep42729

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As discovered by P. W. Anderson, excitations do not propagate freely in a disordered lattice, but, due to destructive interference, they localise. As a consequence, when an atom interacts with a disordered lattice, one indeed observes a non-trivial excitation exchange between atom and lattice. Such non-trivial atomic dynamics will in general be characterised also by a non-trivial quantum information backflow, a clear signature of non-Markovian dynamics. To investigate the above scenario, we consider a quantum emitter, or atom, weakly coupled to a uniform coupled-cavity array (CCA). If initially excited, in the absence of disorder, the emitter undergoes a Markovian spontaneous emission by releasing all its excitation into the CCA (initially in its vacuum state). By introducing static disorder in the CCA the field normal modes become Anderson-localized, giving rise to a non-Markovian atomic dynamics. We show the existence of a functional relationship between a rigorous measure of quantum non-Markovianity and the CCA localization. We furthermore show that the average non-Markovianity of the atomic dynamics is well-described by a phenomenological model in which the atom is coupled, at the same time, to a single mode and to a standard - Markovian - dissipative bath.
It was recently shown [S. Lorenzo, F. Lombardo, F. Ciccarello and M. Palma, Sci. Rep. 7 (2017) 42729] that the presence of static disorder in a bosonic bath — whose normal modes thus become all Anderson-localized — leads to non-Markovianity in the emission of an atom weakly coupled to it (a process which in absence of disorder is fully Markovian). Here, we extend the above analysis beyond the weak-coupling regime for a finite-band bath so as to account for band edge effects. We study the interplay of these with static disorder in the emergence of non-Markovian behavior in terms of a suitable non-Markovianity measure.
Manipulating the dynamics of open quantum systems is a crucial requirement for large-scale quantum computers. Finding ways to overcome or extend decoherence times is a challenging task. Already at the level of a single two-level atom, its reduced dynamics with respect to a larger environment can be very complex. Structured environments, for instance, can lead to various regimes other than memoryless Markovian spontaneous emission. Here, we consider an atom coupled to an array of coupled cavities in the presence of on-site correlated disorder. The correlation is long-ranged and associated with the trace of a fractional Brownian motion following a power-law spectrum. With the cavity modes playing the role of the environment, we study the dynamics of the spontaneous emission. We observe a change from non-Markovian to Markovian decay in the presence of disorder by tuning the correlation parameter. This is associated with a localization-delocalization transition involving the field modes. Two dissipative models that effectively reproduce the behavior of the non-Markovianity are discussed. The dissipation dynamics of the atom can thus be used to extract information about the phase of the environment. Our results provide a direction in the engineering of disordered quantum systems to function as controllable reservoirs.
Under the Born–Markov approximation, a qubit system, such as a two-level atom, is known to undergo a memoryless decay of quantum coherence or excitation when weakly coupled to a featureless environment. Recently, it has been shown that unavoidable disorder in the environment is responsible for non-Markovian effects and information backflow from the environment into the system owing to Anderson localization. This turns disorder into a resource for enhancing non-Markovianity in the system–environment dynamics, which could be of relevance in cavity quantum electrodynamics. Here we consider the decoherence dynamics of a qubit weakly coupled to a two-dimensional bath with a nontrivial topological phase, such as a two-level atom embedded in a two-dimensional coupled-cavity array with a synthetic gauge field realizing a quantum-Hall bath, and show that Markovianity is protected against moderate disorder owing to the robustness of chiral edge modes in the quantum-Hall bath. Interestingly, switching off the gauge field, i.e., flipping the bath into a topological trivial phase, allows one to re-introduce non-Markovian effects. Such a result indicates that changing the topological phase of a bath by a tunable synthetic gauge field can be harnessed to control non-Markovian effects and quantum information backflow in a qubit-environment system.
Abstract We study the non-Markovianity and quantum speedup of a two-level atom (quantum system of interest) in a dissipative Jaynes-Cumming model, where the atom is embedded in a single-mode cavity, which is leaky being coupled to an external reservoir with Ohmic spectral density. We obtain the non-Markovianity characterized by using the probability of the atomic excited state and the negative decoherence rate in the time-local master equation. We also calculate the quantum speed limit time (QSLT) of the evolution process of the atom. The results show that, the atom-cavity coupling is the main physical reasons of the transition from Markovian to non-Markovian dynamics and the transition from no speedup to speedup process, and the critical value of this sudden transition only depends on the Ohmicity parameter. The atom-cavity coupling and the appropriate reservoir parameters can effectively improve the non-Markovianity in the dynamics process and speed up the evolution of the atom. Moreover, the initial non-Markovian dynamics first turns into Markovian and then back to non-Markovian with increasing the atom-cavity coupling under certain condition. Finally, the physical interpretation is provided.
We study the atom-atom correlation length in an atomic array coupled to a waveguide under the Bragg condition with delayed non-Markovian interactions caused by a finite photon propagation time. Starting from a single excited atom, the excitation partially spreads among all atoms, reaching a steady state. The remaining excitation localizes near the initially excited atom, and the atom-atom correlation length decreases as a power law with the interaction delay. This localization phenomenon reveals how the delay-induced non-Markovian behavior affects the correlation transport in waveguide QED systems.
We study the dynamics of entanglement in a one-dimensional coupled-cavity array, with each cavity containing a two-level atom, via the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard (JCH) Hamiltonian in the single-excitation sector. The model features a rich variety of dynamical regimes that can be harnessed for entanglement control. The protocol is based on setting an excited atom above the ground state and further letting it evolve following the natural dynamics of the Hamiltonian. Here we focus on the concurrence between pairs of atoms and its relation to atom-field correlations and the involved free-field modes. We show that the extension and distribution pattern of pairwise entanglement can be manipulated through a judicious tuning of the atom-cavity coupling strength. By also including static noise in the cavity frequencies, we explore the onset of Anderson localization and its interplay with the atomic trapping known to take place in the strong-hopping regime. Remarkably, we find that the stronger the disorder is, the higher are the atom-field correlations, whereas the atomic concurrence responds nonmonotonically. Overall, our work offers a comprehensive account of the machinery of the single-excitation JCH Hamiltonian and contributes to the design of hybrid light-matter quantum networks.