We investigate the ability of correlation measures to witness non-Markovian open-quantum-system dynamics. It is shown that the mutual information and any entanglement measure between the system and an ancilla do not witness all non-Markovian dynamics. A correlation measure is introduced, and it is proven that, in an enlarged setting with two ancillary systems, this measure detects almost all non-Markovian dynamics, except possibly a zero-measure set of dynamics that is nonbijective in finite time intervals. Our proof is constructive and provides different initial states detecting the non-Markovian evolutions. These states are all separable and some are arbitrarily close to a product state. A further advantage of the introduced correlation measure is that it can be efficiently computed through semidefinite programming.
We investigate the ability of correlation measures to witness non-Markovian open-quantum-system dynamics. It is shown that the mutual information and any entanglement measure between the system and an ancilla do not witness all non-Markovian dynamics. A correlation measure is introduced, and it is proven that, in an enlarged setting with two ancillary systems, this measure detects almost all non-Markovian dynamics, except possibly a zero-measure set of dynamics that is nonbijective in finite time intervals. Our proof is constructive and provides different initial states detecting the non-Markovian evolutions. These states are all separable and some are arbitrarily close to a product state. A further advantage of the introduced correlation measure is that it can be efficiently computed through semidefinite programming.
Non-Markovian effects in an open-system dynamics are usually associated to information backflows from the environment to the system. However, the way these backflows manifest and how to detect them is unclear. A natural approach is to study the backflow in terms of the correlations the evolving system displays with another unperturbed system during the dynamics. In this work, we study the power of this approach to witness non-Markovian dynamics using different correlation measures. We identify simple dynamics where the failure of completely positive divisibility is in one-to-one correspondence with a correlation backflow. We then focus on specific correlation measures, such as those based on entanglement and the mutual information, and identify their strengths and limitations. We conclude with a study of a recently introduced correlation measures based on state distinguishability and see how, for these measures, adding an extra auxiliary system enlarges the set of detectable non-Markovian dynamics.
In the study of open quantum systems, memory effects are usually ignored, and this leads to dynamical semigroups and Markovian dynamics. However, in practice, non-Markovian dynamics is the rule rather than the exception. With the recent emergence of quantum information theory, there is a flurry of investigations of non-Markovian dynamics, and several significant measures for non-Markovianity are introduced from various perspectives such as deviation from divisibility, information exchange between a system and its environment, or entanglement with the environment. In this work, by exploiting the correlations flow between a system and an arbitrary ancillary, we propose a considerably intuitive measure for non-Markovianity by use of correlations as quantified by the quantum mutual information rather than entanglement. The fundamental properties, physical significance, and differences and relations with existing measures for non-Markovianity are elucidated. The measure captures quite directly and deeply the characteristics of non-Markovianity from the perspective of information. A simplified version based on Jamio\l{}kowski-Choi isomorphism which encodes operations via bipartite states and does not involve any optimization is also proposed.
We conclusively show that the entanglement- and the mutual-information-based measures of quantum non-Markovianity are inequivalent. To this aim, we first analytically solve the optimization problem in the definition of the entanglement-based measure for a two-level system. We demonstrate that the optimal initial bipartite state of the open system and the ancillary is always given by one of the Bell states for any one-qubit dynamics. On top of this result, we present an explicit example dynamics where memory effects emerge according to the mutual-information-based measure, even though the time evolution remains memoryless with respect to the entanglement-based measure. Finally, we explain this disagreement between the two measures in terms of the information dynamics of the open system, exploring the accessible and inaccessible parts of information.
Abstract The information encoded into an open quantum system that evolves under a Markovian dynamics is always monotonically non-increasing. Nonetheless, for a given quantifier of the information contained in the system, it is in general not clear if for all non-Markovian dynamics it is possible to observe a non-monotonic evolution of this quantity, namely a backflow. We address this problem by considering correlations of finite-dimensional bipartite systems. For this purpose, we consider a class of correlation measures and prove that if the dynamics is non-Markovian there exists at least one element from this class that provides a correlation backflow. Moreover, we provide a set of initial probe states that accomplish this witnessing task. This result provides the first one-to-one relation between non-Markovian quantum dynamics and correlation backflows. Finally, we introduce a measure of non-Markovianity.
In order to engineer an open quantum system and its evolution, it is essential to identify and control the memory effects. These are formally attributed to the non-Markovianity of dynamics that manifests itself by the evolution being indivisible in time, a property which can be witnessed by a nonmonotonic behavior of contractive functions or correlation measures. We show that by monitoring directly the entanglement behavior of a system in a tripartite setting it is possible to witness all invertible non-Markovian dynamics, as well as all (also noninvertible) qubit evolutions. This is achieved by using negativity, a computable measure of entanglement, which in the usual bipartite setting is not a universal non-Markovianity witness. We emphasize further the importance of multipartite states by showing that non-Markovianity cannot be faithfully witnessed by any contractive function of single qubits. We support our statements by an explicit example of eternally non-Markovian qubit dynamics, for which negativity can witness non-Markovianity at arbitrary timescales.
In the study of open quantum systems, information exchange between system and its surrounding environment plays an eminent and important role in analysing the dynamics of open quantum system. In this work, by making use of the quantum information theory and intrinsic properties such as \emph{entropy exchange}, \emph{coherent information} and using the notion of \emph{quantum loss} as a criterion of the amount of lost information, we will propose a new witness, based on information exchange, to detect non-Markovianity. Also a measure for determining the degree of non-Markovianity, will be introduced by using our witness. The characteristic of non-Markovianity is clarified by means of our witness, and we emphasize that this measure is constructed based on the loss of information or in other word the rate of \emph{quantum loss} in the environment. It is defined in term of reducing correlation between system and ancillary. Actually, our focus is on the information which be existed in the environment and it has been entered to the environment due to its interaction with the system. Remarkably, due to choosing the situation which the "system +ancillary" in maximal entangled pure state, optimization procedure does not need in calculation of our measure, such that the degree of non-Markovianity is computed analytically by straightforward calculations.