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arXiv:1804.00455 · Proceedings of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences

Mean field dynamics of some open quantum systems

Marco Merkli, Alireza Rafiyi

Published Apr 1, 2018• 7 citations
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Abstract

We consider a large number N of quantum particles coupled via a mean field interaction to another quantum system (reservoir). Our main result is an expansion for the averages of observables, both of the particles and of the reservoir, in inverse powers of N . The analysis is based directly on the Dyson series expansion of the propagator. We analyse the dynamics, in the limit N → ∞ , of observables of a fixed number n of particles, of extensive particle observables and their fluctuations, as well as of reservoir observables. We illustrate our results on the infinite mode Dicke model and on various energy-conserving models.

DOI
10.1098/rspa.2017.0856

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We consider a large number N of quantum particles coupled via a mean field interaction to another quantum system (reservoir). Our main result is an expansion for the averages of observables, both of the particles and of the reservoir, in inverse powers of N . The analysis is based directly on the Dyson series expansion of the propagator. We analyse the dynamics, in the limit N → ∞ , of observables of a fixed number n of particles, of extensive particle observables and their fluctuations, as well as of reservoir observables. We illustrate our results on the infinite mode Dicke model and on various energy-conserving models.
We consider a system of N identical quantum particles coupled to an environment. The coupling is scaled in a mean-field way, and particles interact indirectly through the environment. There is no direct interaction between particles. The time evolution of the mean-field-scaled particles is called the mean-field dynamics and the limit of the evolution as N → ∞ is called the mean-field limit. The study of mean-field limits is an active topic of research in many-body quantum theory. Previously, almost all research in this area has been carried out for directly interacting particles without interaction with an environment. In this thesis, we prove that under a suitable condition on the initial system states the mean-field limit in the above indirectly interacting particle system does exist. The condition is satisfied in particular for spin ½ (qubit) systems. Assuming this condition, we show that the system dynamics is the free dynamics in the mean-field limit N → ∞, and we find the first and second correction terms. We show that the particles have a collective effect on the dynamics of the environment (reservoir) which we derive analytically. We give examples to illustrate our results.
In this thesis, we consider N quantum particles coupled to collective thermal quantum environments. The coupling is energy conserving and scaled in the mean field way. There is no direct interaction between the particles, they only interact via the common reservoir. It is well known that an initially disentangled state of the N particles will remain disentangled at times in the limit N -> [infinity]. In this thesis, we evaluate the η-body reduced density matrix (tracing over the reservoirs and the N - η remaining particles). We identify the main disentangled part of the reduced density matrix and obtain the first order correction term in 1/N. We show that this correction term is entangled. We also estimate the speed of convergence of the reduced density matrix as N -> [infinity]. Our model is exactly solvable and it is not based on numerical approximation.
We consider quantum particles coupled to local and collective thermal quantum environments. The coupling is energy conserving, and the collective coupling is scaled in the mean-field way. There is no direct interaction between the particles. We show that an initially factorized state of the particles remains factorized at all times, in the limit of large particle number. Each single-particle factor evolves according to an explicit, nonlinear, dissipative and time-dependent Hartree–Lindblad equation. The model is exactly solvable; we do not make any weak coupling or any Markovian approximations, and our results are mathematically rigorous.
The upper bounds for the rate of fluctuation growth of an observable in both open and closed quantum systems have been studied actively recently. In our recent work we showed that the rate of fluctuation growth for an observable in a closed quantum system is upper bounded by the fluctuation of its corresponding velocity-like observable. That bound also indicated a tradeoff between the time derivatives of the mean and the standard deviation. In this paper we will look at open quantum systems in two cases. For the first case we find the generator of evolution for an open system employing both the Taylor expansion and the standard time-ordered evolution via the Dyson series, while in the second case we consider no specific information about the evolution of the system. We then find the rate of fluctuation growth in each case. Comparing the upper bounds for each case and considering the upper bound found for a closed system suggest that including more details by separating the contributions of the system and state dynamics seems to result in looser bounds for the rate of fluctuation growth.
We consider the dynamics of fixed size subsystems of an open quantum system, in \nwhich N particles interact via a common quantum noise (reservoir). We show that \ncorrelations among the particles and between the particles and the reservoir, which \nare brought about through the interaction for finite N, vanish completely in the high \ncomplexity limit N → ∞. We investigate the effect of the particle system on the \nreservoir, which itself is a large quantum system. For each fixed time, we find the \nexplicit construction of a Hilbert space representation of the asymptotic (N → ∞) \nreservoir state and analyze the relation between those representations at different \ntimes.
We examine different nonlinear open quantum systems and calculate the non-Markovianity based on the distinguishability between two density matrices. We show that for a single spin (qubit) coupled to a bosonic field the non-Markovianity depends on the spectral density function and can take on any number N with 0 ≤ N ≤ 1, meaning the dynamics can be Markovian or highly non-Markovian. For the main result we consider a system of Ntot identical spins coupled to an environment in the mean-field way. Each spin is coupled to a local and the common reservoir. There are only indirect interactions between the spins through the common reservoir. In limit Ntot → 1 the subsystem consisting of a fixed set of n particles reduces to a factorized state in which each factor is a single spin evolving according to a nonlinear Hartree-Lindblad equation which is exactly solvable. For non-stationary initial spin states the non-Markovianity diverges. In this instance we can never approximate the dynamics of the quantum system by a Markovian master equation and this implies that in the mean field models, memory effects are significant.