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arXiv:1709.01157 · Nature Communications

Probing the strongly driven spin-boson model in a superconducting quantum circuit

Luca Magazzù, P. Forn-Díaz, Ron Belyansky, Jean-Luc Orgiazzi, Muhammet Ali Yurtalan, Martin R. Otto, Adrian Lupaşcu, Christopher M. Wilson, Milena Grifoni

Published Apr 11, 2018• 109 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum two-level systems interacting with the surroundings are ubiquitous in nature. The interaction suppresses quantum coherence and forces the system towards a steady state. Such dissipative processes are captured by the paradigmatic spin-boson model, describing a two-state particle, the "spin", interacting with an environment formed by harmonic oscillators. A fundamental question to date is to what extent intense coherent driving impacts a strongly dissipative system. Here we investigate experimentally and theoretically a superconducting qubit strongly coupled to an electromagnetic environment and subjected to a coherent drive. This setup realizes the driven Ohmic spin-boson model. We show that the drive reinforces environmental suppression of quantum coherence, and that a coherent-to-incoherent transition can be achieved by tuning the drive amplitude. An out-of-equilibrium detailed balance relation is demonstrated. These results advance fundamental understanding of open quantum systems and bear potential for the design of entangled light-matter states.

DOI
10.1038/s41467-018-03626-w

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Quantum two-level systems interacting with the surroundings are ubiquitous in nature. The interaction suppresses quantum coherence and forces the system towards a steady state. Such dissipative processes are captured by the paradigmatic spin-boson model, describing a two-state particle, the "spin", interacting with an environment formed by harmonic oscillators. A fundamental question to date is to what extent intense coherent driving impacts a strongly dissipative system. Here we investigate experimentally and theoretically a superconducting qubit strongly coupled to an electromagnetic environment and subjected to a coherent drive. This setup realizes the driven Ohmic spin-boson model. We show that the drive reinforces environmental suppression of quantum coherence, and that a coherent-to-incoherent transition can be achieved by tuning the drive amplitude. An out-of-equilibrium detailed balance relation is demonstrated. These results advance fundamental understanding of open quantum systems and bear potential for the design of entangled light-matter states.
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The quantum dynamics of the dissipative two-level system in the Ohmic bath with Rabi driving is studied by means of a modified Bloch-Redfield approach based on a unitary transformation. The main purpose is to understand the effect of counter-rotating terms of the system-environment interaction on the dynamics of the two-level system and, in particular, if it is possible to control the effective system-environment coupling by their effect on the interference between driving and dissipation. By calculating the nonequilibrium correlation P(t)P(t)P(t) for a finite driving it is shown that the counter-rotating terms of the system-environment interaction play an important role in the dynamic evolution with a longer coherent time and a weaker amplitude of the long-time driven oscillation.
Quantum mechanics describes the unitary time evolution of closed systems. In practice, every quantum system interacts with the environment leading to an irreversible loss of coherence. The Spin-Boson model (SBM) is central to the understanding of the fundamental process of decoherence of a two-state quantum system interacting with a bosonic heat bath but the nature of transient dynamics in the presence of hybrid diagonal and off-diagonal system-bath interactions remains largely unexplored. Here, we investigate how the hybrid system-bath interactions of an Ohmic environment induce localization in the bias-free SBM. For strong coupling to the environment, localization is strongly affected by a dynamically generated bias via the renormalization of the tunneling amplitude. We find that counteractive effects of Hamiltonian parameters on non-exponential short-time dynamics and long-time population equilibration can lead to a separation of timescales and non-equilibrium quantum coherent dynamics that can persist even for ultra-strong system-bath interaction. The findings offer novel opportunities to exploit coherence as a resource in quantum devices operating in the ultra-strong coupling regime.
We present theoretical transmission spectra of a strongly driven, damped flux qubit coupled to a dissipative resonator in the ultrastrong-coupling regime. Such a qubit-oscillator system, described within a dissipative Rabi model, constitutes the building block of superconducting circuit QED platforms. The addition of a strong drive allows one to characterize the system properties and study novel phenomena, leading to a better understanding and control of the qubit-oscillator system. In this work, the calculated transmission of a weak probe field quantifies the response of the qubit, in frequency domain, under the influence of the quantized resonator and of the strong microwave drive. We find distinctive features of the entangled driven qubit-resonator spectrum, namely resonant features and avoided crossings, modified by the presence of the dissipative environment. The magnitude, positions, and broadening of these features are determined by the interplay among qubit-oscillator detuning, the strength of their coupling, the driving amplitude, and the interaction with the heat bath. This work establishes the theoretical basis for future experiments in the driven ultrastrong-coupling regime.
We consider superconducting circuits for the purpose of simulating the spin-boson model. The spin-boson model consists of a single two-level system coupled to bosonic modes. In most cases, the model is considered in a limit where the bosonic modes are sufficiently dense to form a continuous spectral bath. A very well known case is the Ohmic bath, where the density of states grows linearly with the frequency. In the limit of weak coupling or large temperature, this problem can be solved numerically. If the coupling is strong, the bosonic modes can become sufficiently excited to make a classical simulation impossible. Here we discuss how a quantum simulation of this problem can be performed by coupling a superconducting qubit to a set of microwave resonators. We demonstrate a possible implementation of a continuous spectral bath with individual bath resonators coupling strongly to the qubit. Applying a microwave drive scheme potentially allows us to access the strong-coupling regime of the spin-boson model. We discuss how the resulting spin relaxation dynamics with different initialization conditions can be probed by standard qubit-readout techniques from circuit quantum electrodynamics.
We investigate the dynamics of a two-qubit open quantum system, in particular the two-qubit spin-boson model in the strong coupling regime, coupled to two thermal bosonic baths under non-Markovian and non-equilibrium conditions. Two complementary approaches, the Hierarchical Equations of Motion (HEOM) and Reaction Coordinate Mapping (RCM), are employed to examine various coupling regimes between the qubits and their respective baths. The dynamical features of the model and the impact of the tunneling amplitude on quantum coherence of the system are probed using the l1l_1l1​-norm of coherence. The model is further shown to have non-Markovian evolution. The nontrivial task of calculating entropy production in the strong-coupling regime is performed using auxiliary density operators in HEOM. Motivated by the realization of a quantum thermal device in the strong-coupling regime, the non-equilibrium steady-state behavior of the system is investigated. Furthermore, the relationship between the heat and spin currents and the tunneling amplitude is probed.