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arXiv:1611.02800 · Physical Review A

General approach to find steady-state manifolds in Markovian and non-Markovian systems

Da-Jian Zhang, Xiao‐Dong Yu, Hua-Lin Huang, D. M. Tong

Published Nov 28, 2016• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Steady-state manifolds of open quantum systems, such as decoherence-free subspaces and noiseless subsystems, are of great practical importance to the end of quantum information processing. Yet, it is a difficult problem to find steady-state manifolds of open quantum systems, especially of non-Markovian systems. In this paper, we propose an approach to find the steady-state manifolds, which is generally applicable to both Markovian and non-Markovian systems. Our approach is based on an arbitrarily given steady state, and by following the standard steps of the approach, the steady-state manifold on the support subspace of the given state can be obtained. Our work reduces the problem of finding a manifold of steady states to that of finding only one steady state, which is indeed an interesting progress towards completely solving the difficult problem. Besides, in deriving our approach, we introduce the notions of the modified noise algebra and its commutant, and prove two theorems on the structure of steady-state manifolds of general open systems, which themselves are interesting findings too.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.94.052132

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Steady-state manifolds of open quantum systems, such as decoherence-free subspaces and noiseless subsystems, are of great practical importance to the end of quantum information processing. Yet, it is a difficult problem to find steady-state manifolds of open quantum systems, especially of non-Markovian systems. In this paper, we propose an approach to find the steady-state manifolds, which is generally applicable to both Markovian and non-Markovian systems. Our approach is based on an arbitrarily given steady state, and by following the standard steps of the approach, the steady-state manifold on the support subspace of the given state can be obtained. Our work reduces the problem of finding a manifold of steady states to that of finding only one steady state, which is indeed an interesting progress towards completely solving the difficult problem. Besides, in deriving our approach, we introduce the notions of the modified noise algebra and its commutant, and prove two theorems on the structure of steady-state manifolds of general open systems, which themselves are interesting findings too.
It has been found that Markovian quantum dissipative processes, described by the Lindblad equation, may have attractive steady-state manifolds, in which dissipation and decoherence can play a positive role to quantum information processing. In this article, we show that such attractive steady-state manifolds with the same positive features as in Markovian dissipative processes can exist in the non-Markovian dissipative processes. Our finding indicates that the dissipation-assisted schemes implemented in the Markovian systems can be directly generalized to the non-Markovian systems.
We develop a structure theory for decoherence-free subspaces and noiseless subsystems that applies to arbitrary (not necessarily unital) quantum operations. The theory can be alternatively phrased in terms of the superoperator perspective, or the algebraic noise commutant formalism. As an application, we propose a method for finding all such subspaces and subsystems for arbitrary quantum operations. We suggest that this work brings the fundamental passive technique for error correction in quantum computing an important step closer to practical realization.
Decoherence free subspaces are a steady-state structure of the open quantum system which preserves quantum coherence between the states lying with in it and thus has found a variety of applications throughout quantum information science and technology. In this paper we study the computational complexity of deciding whether an open quantum system admits a decoherence free subspace or not. More specifically we study this problem with in the context of Markovian open quantum systems, governed by the time-independent Lindblad master equation. Along the way we introduce the kkk-Local Lindbladian problem, which captures the difficulty of computing purity decay rates under Lindbladian dynamics. We show that both problems are hard for the complexity class Quantum Merlin Arthur (QMA) when the locality k≥5k \geq 5k≥5, with the first under perfect completeness and the second being complete for QMA. Our hardness construction generalizes Kitaev's clock Hamiltonian construction to the open quantum system setting by encoding the execution of a quantum circuit into the steady subspace of a Lindbladian containing both pure and mixed history states. This subspace is then mixed depending on the output of the encoded circuit. Our results suggest that deciding whether a generic Markovian open quantum system admits a decoherence free subspace is intractable even for quantum computation.
We characterize the dynamical behavior of continuous-time, Markovian quantum systems with respect to a subsystem of interest. Markovian dynamics accurately describes a wide class of open quantum systems of relevance to quantum information processing, subsystem encodings offering a general pathway for faithfully representing quantum information. We provide explicit linear-algebraic characterizations of the notion of invariant and noiseless subsystem for Markovian master equations, under different robustness assumptions for model parameter and initial state variations. The stronger concept of an attractive quantum subsystem is introduced, and sufficient existence conditions are identified based on Lyapunov’s stability techniques. As a main control application, we address the potential of output-feedback Markovian control strategies for quantum pure state-stabilization and noiseless-subspace generation. In particular,
We propose a general framework for investigating a large class of stabilization problems in Markovian quantum systems. Building on the notions of invariant and attractive quantum subsystem, we characterize attractive subspaces by exploring the structure of the invariant sets for the dynamics. Our general analysis results are exploited to assess the ability of open-loop Hamiltonian and output-feedback control strategies to synthesize Markovian generators which stabilize a target subsystem, subspace, or pure-state. In particular, we provide an algebraic characterization of the manifold of stabilizable pure states in arbitrary finite-dimensional Markovian systems, that leads to a constructive strategy for designing the relevant controllers. Implications for stabilization of entangled pure states are addressed by example.
The paradigm of considering open quantum systems—i.e., focusing only on the system of interest, and treating the rest of the world as an effective environment—has proven to be a highly effective way to understand a range of quantum systems, across areas of study such as quantum optics, cold atoms, superconducting qubits, and impurities in solid-state systems. A common approach in many of these contexts has been to consider simplified approaches based on the Born and Markov approximations. While these approximations are indeed often appropriate in contexts such as quantum optics, the widespread application of these approximations has been driven more by simplicity than by accuracy. In particular, these Markovian treatments will fail in many cases, such as when coupling to the environment is not weak, when the environment is structured and has resonances, when the system couples to low-frequency modes of the environment, or when the questions of interest involve the propagation of information through the environment. Despite the fact that many real problems are non-Markovian, the Markov approximation is still widely used, as it is often assumed that a fully non-Markovian treatment is too complex to be practical. In this Perspective we discuss a recently developed set of techniques that address this challenge. Centering our discussion around the notion of the process tensor, we demonstrate that the generality of the process tensor concept, coupled with efficient tensor-network methods, opens the door to the description of a wide range of observable non-Markovian processes in a wide range of open quantum systems.