Nonequilibrium effects on quantum correlations: Discord, mutual information, and entanglement of a two-fermionic system in bosonic and fermionic environments
We study the steady-state entanglement and correlations of an open system comprising two coupled fermions in the equilibrium or nonequilibrium environments and distill the nonequilibrium contribution to the quantum correlations. We show that in the equilibrium condition, the steady-state quantum correlations exhibit nonmonotonic behavior, while in the nonequilibrium case, the monotonicity is determined by many parameters. The entanglement vanishes abruptly upon the increase of the temperature (bias) and chemical potential bias, and it witnesses a critical chemical potential above which the concurrence always remains positive. In the fermionic reservoirs, quantum correlations reach the maximal values when one chemical potential of the reservoirs matches the system frequency. We separate the quantum correlation generation due to the averaged effect from the pure nonequilibrium effect. In contrast with previous results, when the averaged effect is separated out, the nonequilibrium generation of quantum correlation shows a distinctive monotonic behavior. The difference between the large-tunneling regime with decaying correlations and the small-tunneling with increasing correlations is discussed. Near the boundary of the two regimes, the entanglement behavior is a mixture of two extremes, and it resurrects with the increase of chemical potential bias after its previous drop to zero.
We study the steady-state entanglement and correlations of an open system comprising two coupled fermions in the equilibrium or nonequilibrium environments and distill the nonequilibrium contribution to the quantum correlations. We show that in the equilibrium condition, the steady-state quantum correlations exhibit nonmonotonic behavior, while in the nonequilibrium case, the monotonicity is determined by many parameters. The entanglement vanishes abruptly upon the increase of the temperature (bias) and chemical potential bias, and it witnesses a critical chemical potential above which the concurrence always remains positive. In the fermionic reservoirs, quantum correlations reach the maximal values when one chemical potential of the reservoirs matches the system frequency. We separate the quantum correlation generation due to the averaged effect from the pure nonequilibrium effect. In contrast with previous results, when the averaged effect is separated out, the nonequilibrium generation of quantum correlation shows a distinctive monotonic behavior. The difference between the large-tunneling regime with decaying correlations and the small-tunneling with increasing correlations is discussed. Near the boundary of the two regimes, the entanglement behavior is a mixture of two extremes, and it resurrects with the increase of chemical potential bias after its previous drop to zero.
We analytically and numerically investigate the steady-state entanglement and coherence of two coupled qubits, each interacting with a local boson or fermion reservoir, based on the Bloch-Redfield master equation beyond the secular approximation. We find that there is nonvanishing steady-state coherence in the nonequilibrium scenario, which grows monotonically with the nonequilibrium condition quantified by the temperature difference or chemical potential difference of the two baths. The steady-state entanglement, in general, is a nonmonotonic function of the nonequilibrium condition as well as the bath parameters in the equilibrium setting. We also discover that weak interqubit coupling and high base temperature or chemical potential of the baths can strongly suppress the steady-state entanglement and coherence, regardless of the strength of the nonequilibrium condition. On the other hand, the energy detuning of the two qubits, when used in a compensatory way with the nonequilibrium condition, can lead to significant enhancement of the steady-state entanglement in some parameter regimes. In addition, the qubits typically have a stronger steady-state entanglement when coupled to fermion baths exchanging particles with the system than boson baths exchanging energy with the system, under similar conditions. We also identify a close connection between the energy current flowing through the system and the steady-state coherence. Preliminary investigations suggest that these results are insensitive to the form of the reservoir spectral densities in the Markovian regime. Feasible experimental realization of measuring the steady-state entanglement and coherence is discussed for the coupled qubit system in nonequilibrium environments. Our findings offer some general guidelines for optimizing the steady-state entanglement and coherence in the coupled qubit system and may find potential applications in quantum information technology.
Thermal equilibrium states of local quantum many-body systems are notorious for their spatially decaying correlations, which place severe restrictions on the types of many-body entanglement structures that may be observed at finite temperatures. These restrictions may however be defied when an out-of-equilibrium steady state is considered instead. In this paper, we study the entanglement properties of free fermions on a one-dimensional lattice that contains a generic charge- and energy-conserving noninteracting impurity, and that is connected at its edges to two reservoirs with different equilibrium energy distributions. These distributions may differ in either temperature, chemical potential, or both, thereby inducing an external bias. We analytically derive exact asymptotic expressions for several quantum information measures -- the mutual information, its Rényi generalizations, and the fermionic negativity -- that quantify the correlation and entanglement between two subsystems located on opposite sides of the impurity. We show that all these measures scale (to a leading order) linearly with the overlap between one subsystem and the mirror image of the other (upon reflection of the latter about the impurity), independently of the distance between the subsystems. While a simple proportionality relation between the negativity and Rényi versions of the mutual information is observed to hold at zero temperature, it breaks down at finite temperatures, suggesting that these quantities represent strong long-range correlations of different origins. Our results generalize previous findings that were limited to the case of a chemical-potential bias at zero temperature, rigorously demonstrating that the effect of long-range volume-law entanglement is robust at finite temperatures.
Quantum discord captures quantum correlations beyond entanglement and can remain finite even when the entanglement vanishes. We investigate the transient nonequilibrium dynamics and steady-state behavior of quantum discord and classical correlations in a double quantum dot (DQD) system coupled to fermionic reservoirs. By employing a quantum Langevin equation formalism, we obtain the exact reduced density matrix of the system, enabling a comprehensive analysis of its quantum and classical correlations under nonequilibrium conditions. The influence of system-reservoir coupling strength, spectral bandwidth, thermal bias, and varying initial state on both the transient dynamics and steady-state correlations is systematically analyzed. Quantum discord remains finite in the nonequilibrium steady state over a broad parameter range. Although thermal gradients reduce the overall magnitude of correlations, quantum discord persists and exhibits greater resilience. These results demonstrate that nonequilibrium electronic transport, together with the environmental spectral properties and reservoir asymmetry, provides an effective means of controlling nonclassical correlations in mesoscopic systems and establishes quantum discord as a robust hallmark of open fermionic quantum devices.
ABSTRACT We study the steady‐state quantum Fisher information (QFI) and several quantum resources entanglement, quantum coherence, and quantum discord for a pair of coupled qubits interacting with either bosonic or fermionic reservoirs. Using the Bloch–Redfield master equation beyond the secular approximation, we derive analytical expressions for the steady‐state density matrix and analyze how equilibrium and nonequilibrium conditions shape the resulting quantum correlations. In thermal equilibrium, the quantum resources display distinct behaviors depending on the bath statistics, with fermionic reservoirs enabling stronger stationary correlations due to particle‐exchange processes. Under nonequilibrium driving, generated either by a temperature imbalance or by a chemical potential difference, the system develops steady‐state coherence and enhanced discord, while entanglement and QFI exhibit non‐monotonic dependence governed by the interplay between coherence generation and population mixing. Our results identify the regimes in which steady‐state metrological performance can be optimized, and they provide general guidelines for enhancing quantum correlations in dissipative two‐qubit platforms.
We study the process of heat transfer through an entangled pair of two-level systems, demonstrating the role of quantum correlations in this nonequilibrium process. While quantum correlations generally degrade with increasing the temperature bias, introducing spatial asymmetry leads to an intricate behavior: connecting the qubits unequally to the reservoirs, one finds that quantum correlations persist and increase with the temperature bias when the system is more weakly linked to the hot reservoir. In the reversed case, linking the system more strongly to the hot bath, the opposite, more natural behavior is observed, with quantum correlations being strongly suppressed upon increasing the temperature bias.
In this research we analyze two models using the tensor network algorithm. The quantum correlations of a two-qubit system are first studied in different bosonic reservoirs. Both equilibrium and nonequilibrium scenarios are discussed. Non-Markovian effects can improve the survival time of the quantum correlations significantly and weaken the decoherence effect. Non-Markovian dynamics with existing memory can lead to entanglement rebirth in specific scenarios instead of the eventual entanglement decay or death seen in memoryless Markovian cases. The system reaches a steady state quickest in sub-Ohmic reservoirs and shows the most apparent non-Markovian behavior in super-Ohmic reservoirs. The Markovian approximation used in this paper is superior to that in the Bloch-Redfield master equation. The entanglement dynamics behaves similarly under different approaches when the system-bath coupling is weak and the memory effect is significant when the system-bath coupling is strong. We study not only the impact of the environment on quantum correlations, but also how to protect quantum correlations. Starting from a state in which the two ends are maximally entangled, a one-dimensional Aubry-Andr\'e chain model is also studied. We identify distinct phases by monitoring the imbalance dynamics. When the chain is closed, the imbalance dynamics behaves differently in various phases and so does the entanglement evolution between the chain's ends. When the first site couples to a bath, we find that the imbalance dynamics can still be an effective indicator to differentiate various phases in an early evolution stage since the imbalance dynamics is only remarkably affected at relatively high temperatures. The distribution of the eigenenergy of the system can account for it. The entanglement of the chain ends decays rapidly in all phases due to one of the ends being coupled to the bath directly. However, the entanglement of the chain ends will persist for a perceptible amount of time in the localization phase if the bath is coupled to the middle site of the chain. Our research shows that one can utilize the disordered environment as a buffer to protect quantum correlations.