Open fermion systems with energy-independent bilinear coupling to a fermionic environment have been shown to obey a general duality relation [J. Schulenborg et al., Phys. Rev. B 93, 081411 (2016)] which allows for a drastic simplification of time-evolution calculations. In the weak-coupling limit, such a system can be associated with a unique dual physical system in which all energies are inverted, in particular the internal interaction. This paper generalizes this fermionic duality in two ways: we allow for weak coupling with arbitrary energy dependence and describe both occupations and coherences coupled by a quantum master equation for the density operator. We also show that whenever generalized detailed balance holds (Kolmogorov criterion), the stationary probabilities for the dual system can be expressed explicitly in terms of the stationary recurrence times of the original system, even at large bias. We illustrate the generalized duality by a detailed analysis of the rate equation for a quantum dot with strong onsite Coulomb repulsion, going beyond the commonly assumed wide-band limit. We present predictions for (i) the decay rates for transient charge and heat currents after a gate-voltage quench and (ii) the thermoelectric linear-response coefficients in the stationary limit. We show that even for pronouncedly energy-dependent coupling, all nontrivial parameter dependence in these problems is entirely captured by just two well-understood stationary variables, the average charge of the system and of the dual system. Remarkably, it is the latter that often dictates the most striking features of the measurable quantities (e.g., positions of resonances), underscoring the importance of the dual system for understanding the actual one.
Open fermion systems with energy-independent bilinear coupling to a fermionic environment have been shown to obey a general duality relation [J. Schulenborg et al., Phys. Rev. B 93, 081411 (2016)] which allows for a drastic simplification of time-evolution calculations. In the weak-coupling limit, such a system can be associated with a unique dual physical system in which all energies are inverted, in particular the internal interaction. This paper generalizes this fermionic duality in two ways: we allow for weak coupling with arbitrary energy dependence and describe both occupations and coherences coupled by a quantum master equation for the density operator. We also show that whenever generalized detailed balance holds (Kolmogorov criterion), the stationary probabilities for the dual system can be expressed explicitly in terms of the stationary recurrence times of the original system, even at large bias. We illustrate the generalized duality by a detailed analysis of the rate equation for a quantum dot with strong onsite Coulomb repulsion, going beyond the commonly assumed wide-band limit. We present predictions for (i) the decay rates for transient charge and heat currents after a gate-voltage quench and (ii) the thermoelectric linear-response coefficients in the stationary limit. We show that even for pronouncedly energy-dependent coupling, all nontrivial parameter dependence in these problems is entirely captured by just two well-understood stationary variables, the average charge of the system and of the dual system. Remarkably, it is the latter that often dictates the most striking features of the measurable quantities (e.g., positions of resonances), underscoring the importance of the dual system for understanding the actual one.
The study of electronic transport through strongly confined, interacting open quantum systems has regained considerable interest over the past years. One main motivation behind this concerns the possibility of time-dependently controlled operations on individual electrons, promising applications in, e.g., metrology and electron-based quantum computing. In particular, fundamental questions of quantum thermodynamics and the practical necessity to recover waste heat from nanocircuits have attracted attention towards electronic energy currents.The research articles covered by this thesis contribute to this topic by deriving and exploring a fundamental symmetry relation -- the fermionic duality. This duality applies to the quantum master equation of any locally interacting, fermionic open quantum system tunnel-coupled to non-interacting reservoirs. It yields a crosslink between modes and amplitudes corresponding to the evolution rates in the time-dependent decay of the open-system state. This crosslink involves a mapping between the system of interest and a dual system with inverted environment potentials, local energies, and thus especially inverted interactions. The duality thereby explains many, at first sight unintuitive, transport features and significantly improves their analytic accessability. In particular, we can understand why charge- and energy currents through quantum dots with strong local Coulomb repulsion in fact exhibit features of electron-electron attraction, both in the time-dependent decay after a sudden switch and in the stationary limit.More fundamental insights are obtained by identifying the duality to be rooted in Pauli's exclusion principle and the parity superselection principle. Namely, this implies that the duality is independent of, and hence combinable with many other general symmetries, including particle-hole symmetry, time-reversal symmetry, detailed balance and Onsager reciprocity. Especially the combination with the latter offers a novel perspective on the thermoelectric response of open, locally interacting electronic nanosystems.
We consider the exact time-evolution of a broad class of fermionic open quantum systems with both strong interactions and strong coupling to wide-band reservoirs. We present a nontrivial fermionic duality relation between the evolution of states (Schrödinger) and of observables (Heisenberg). We show how this highly nonintuitive relation can be understood and exploited in analytical calculations within all canonical approaches to quantum dynamics, covering Kraus measurement operators, the Choi-Jamiołkowski state, time-convolution and convolutionless quantum master equations and generalized Lindblad jump operators. We discuss the insights this offers into the divisibility and causal structure of the dynamics and the application to nonperturbative Markov approximations and their initial-slip corrections. Our results underscore that predictions for fermionic models are already fixed by fundamental principles to a much greater extent than previously thought.
We consider the exact time-evolution of a broad class of fermionic open quantum systems with both strong interactions and strong coupling to wide-band reservoirs. We present a nontrivial fermionic duality relation between the evolution of states (Schr\"odinger) and of observables (Heisenberg). We show how this highly nonintuitive relation can be understood and exploited in analytical calculations within all canonical approaches to quantum dynamics, covering Kraus measurement operators, the Choi-Jamio{\l}kowski state, time-convolution and convolutionless quantum master equations and generalized Lindblad jump operators. We discuss the insights this offers into the divisibility and causal structure of the dynamics and the application to nonperturbative Markov approximations and their initial-slip corrections. Our results underscore that predictions for fermionic models are already fixed by fundamental principles to a much greater extent than previously thought.
The Lindblad (GKLS) master equation, which represents the mathematical form for the general evolution of a density matrix, is a versatile and widely-used tool in open quantum systems. In contrast with the typical approach of imposing additional conditions on the system, such as weak coupling or energy conservation, we explore the structure of the equation with no assumptions. We demonstrate that general quantum dynamics can be expressed through a combination of free evolution, exchanges of some physical quantities (generalised charges), not necessarily commuting with the Hamiltonian, between the system and the bath, and pure dephasing. This result comprises a novel perspective on quantum master equations, employing physical processes as elemental parts. We use it to explore the dynamics and stationary states of a two-level system and show that strong coupling, particle exchange, and non-Abelian effects all share the same physical origin. Moreover, we demonstrate that the generalised Gibbs state for all three cases contains a non-commutation term, which has not been previously considered.
By solving the exact master equation of open quantum systems, we formulate the quantum thermodynamics from weak to strong couplings. The open quantum systems exchange matters, energies, and information with their reservoirs through quantum particle tunnelings that are described by the generalized Fano-Anderson Hamiltonians. We find that the exact solution of the reduced density matrix of these systems approaches a Gibbs-type state in the steady-state limit for the systems in arbitrary initial states as well as for both the weak and strong system-reservoir coupling strengths. When the couplings become strong, thermodynamic quantities of the system must be renormalized. The renormalization effects are obtained nonperturbatively after exactly tracing over all reservoir states through the coherent state path integrals. The renormalized system Hamiltonian is characterized by the renormalized system energy levels and interactions, corresponding to the quantum work done by the system. The renormalized temperature is introduced to characterize the entropy production counting the heat transfer between the system and the reservoir. We further find that only with the renormalized system Hamiltonian and other renormalized thermodynamic quantities can the exact steady state of the system be expressed as the standard Gibbs state. Consequently, the corresponding exact steady-state particle occupations in the renormalized system energy levels obey the Bose-Einstein and the Fermi-Dirac distributions for bosonic and fermionic systems, respectively. In the very weak system-reservoir coupling limit, the renormalized system Hamiltonian and the renormalized temperature are reduced to the original bare Hamiltonian of the system and the initial temperature of the reservoir. Thus, the conventional statistical mechanics and thermodynamics are thereby rigorously deduced from quantum dynamical evolution. In the last, this nonperturbative renormalization method is also extended to general interacting open quantum systems.
We extend the recently developed causal superfermion approach to the real-time diagrammatic transport theory to time-dependent decay problems. Its usefulness is illustrated for the Anderson model of a quantum dot with tunneling rates depending on spin due to ferromagnetic electrodes and/or spin polarization of the tunnel junction. This approach naturally leads to an exact result for one of the time-dependent decay modes for any value of the Coulomb interaction compatible with the wideband limit. We generalize these results to multilevel Anderson models and indicate constraints they impose on renormalization-group schemes in order to recover the exact noninteracting limit.(i) We first set up a second quantization scheme in the space of density operators constructing ``causal'' field superoperators using the fundamental physical principles of causality/probability conservation and fermion-parity superselection (univalence). The time-dependent perturbation series for the time evolution is renormalized by explicitly performing the wideband limit on the superoperator level. As a result, the occurrence of destruction and creation superoperators are shown to be tightly linked to the physical short- and long-time reservoir correlations, respectively. This effective theory takes as a reference a damped local system, which may also provide an interesting starting point for numerical calculations of memory kernels in real time. (ii) A remarkable feature of this approach is the natural appearance of a fermion-parity protected decay mode which can be measured using a setup proposed earlier [Phys. Rev. B 85, 075301 (2012)]. This mode can be calculated exactly in the fully Markovian, infinite-temperature limit by leading-order perturbation theory, but surprisingly persists unaltered for finite temperature, for any interaction and tunneling spin polarization. (iii) Finally, we show how a Liouville-space analog of the Pauli principle directly leads to an exact expression in the noninteracting limit for the time evolution, extending previous works by starting from an arbitrary initial mixed state including spin and pairing coherences and two-particle correlations stored on the quantum dot. This exact result is obtained already in finite-order renormalized perturbation theory, which surprisingly is not quadratic but quartic in the field superoperators, despite the absence of Coulomb interaction. The latter fact we relate to the time evolution of the two-particle component of the mixed state, which is just the fermion-parity operator, a cornerstone of the formalism. We illustrate how the super-Pauli-principle also simplifies problems with nonzero Coulomb interaction.