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arXiv:2005.00029 · Physical Review Research

Capturing non-Markovian dynamics on near-term quantum computers

Kade Head-Marsden, Stefan Krastanov, David A. Mazziotti, Prineha Narang

Published Feb 25, 2021• 72 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

With the rapid progress in quantum hardware, there has been an increased interest in new quantum algorithms to describe complex many-body systems searching for the still-elusive goal of "useful quantum advantage."Surprisingly, quantum algorithms for the treatment of open quantum systems (OQSs) have remained underexplored, in part due to the inherent challenges of mapping non-unitary evolution into the framework of unitary gates.Evolving an open system unitarily necessitates dilation into a new effective system to incorporate critical environmental degrees of freedom.In this context, we present and validate a new quantum algorithm to treat non-Markovian dynamics in OQSs built on the ensemble of Lindblad's trajectories approach, invoking the Sz.-Nagy dilation theorem.Here we demonstrate our algorithm on the Jaynes-Cummings model in the strong-coupling and detuned regimes, relevant in quantum optics and driven quantum system studies.This algorithm, a key step towards generalized modeling of non-Markovian dynamics on a noisy-quantum device, captures a broad class of dynamics and opens up a new direction in OQS problems.

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.3.013182

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With the rapid progress in quantum hardware, there has been an increased interest in new quantum algorithms to describe complex many-body systems searching for the still-elusive goal of "useful quantum advantage."Surprisingly, quantum algorithms for the treatment of open quantum systems (OQSs) have remained underexplored, in part due to the inherent challenges of mapping non-unitary evolution into the framework of unitary gates.Evolving an open system unitarily necessitates dilation into a new effective system to incorporate critical environmental degrees of freedom.In this context, we present and validate a new quantum algorithm to treat non-Markovian dynamics in OQSs built on the ensemble of Lindblad's trajectories approach, invoking the Sz.-Nagy dilation theorem.Here we demonstrate our algorithm on the Jaynes-Cummings model in the strong-coupling and detuned regimes, relevant in quantum optics and driven quantum system studies.This algorithm, a key step towards generalized modeling of non-Markovian dynamics on a noisy-quantum device, captures a broad class of dynamics and opens up a new direction in OQS problems.
With the rapid progress in quantum hardware, there has been an increased interest in new quantum algorithms to describe complex many-body systems searching for the still-elusive goal of "useful quantum advantage." Surprisingly, quantum algorithms for the treatment of open quantum systems (OQSs) have remained underexplored, in part due to the inherent challenges of mapping non-unitary evolution into the framework of unitary gates. Evolving an open system unitarily necessitates dilation into a new effective system to incorporate critical environmental degrees of freedom. In this context, we present and validate a new quantum algorithm to treat non-Markovian dynamics in OQSs built on the ensemble of Lindblad's trajectories approach, invoking the Sz.-Nagy dilation theorem. Here we demonstrate our algorithm on the Jaynes-Cummings model in the strong-coupling and detuned regimes, relevant in quantum optics and driven quantum system studies. This algorithm, a key step towards generalized modeling of non-Markovian dynamics on a noisy-quantum device, captures a broad class of dynamics and opens up a new direction in OQS problems.
Research in open quantum system dynamics has received growing interest in recent years, and its ongoing investigation has uncovered many intriguing physics departing from closed systems. A particularly useful application of the open quantum system theory is to simulate quantum dynamical processes in condensed phase materials. As the quantum degree of freedom is constantly under the influence of its thermal environment, the accurate description of the dynamics often requires non-Markovian time evolution at finite temperature. Such calculation is usually quite challenging on classical computers as extensive memory storage is required. In this work, we focus on a quantum system linearly coupled to its harmonic bath and present a path integral based quantum algorithm that time-evolves the reduced density matrix under finite temperature non-Markovian dynamics. To treat the nonunitary time evolution, the Sz.-Nagy dilation scheme is used for the conversion to unitary dynamics that can be implementable on gate-based quantum computers. The modified Hadamard test is then used to retrieve all the information of the reduced density matrix. Complexity analysis shows that the memory requirement has exponential reduction on the quantum machine whereas the runtime complexity stays roughly the same as for the classical computer. It points to the possibility of using this algorithm to simulate multilevel and multisite non-Markovian quantum dynamics that are beyond the reach of classical computers. The algorithm makes no ad hoc assumptions and extends naturally beyond Markovian and weak coupling regimes. We validated the algorithm on the quantum simulator with the spin-boson model and demonstrated its excellent agreement with the classical computer benchmark. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Although Lindblad developed a general Markovian theory for open-system dynamics while maintaining the positivity of the density matrix, a practical non-Markovian analog remains a significant problem. Here, we present an extension of Lindblad's theory through an ensemble of Lindbladian trajectories originating from different times in the system's history. This approach provides an account of the system's memory while preserving the positivity of the density matrix. We apply the theory to the Jaynes-Cummings model to capture non-Markovian dynamics in the weak and strong coupling regimes.
Designing quantum algorithms for simulating quantum systems has seen enormous progress, yet few studies have been done to develop quantum algorithms for open quantum dynamics despite its importance in modeling the system-environment interaction found in most realistic physical models. In this work we propose and demonstrate a general quantum algorithm to evolve open quantum dynamics on quantum computing devices. The Kraus operators governing the time evolution can be converted into unitary matrices with minimal dilation guaranteed by the Sz.-Nagy theorem. This allows the evolution of the initial state through unitary quantum gates, while using significantly less resource than required by the conventional Stinespring dilation. We demonstrate the algorithm on an amplitude damping channel using the IBM Qiskit quantum simulator and the IBM Q 5 Tenerife quantum device. The proposed algorithm does not require particular models of dynamics or decomposition of the quantum channel, and thus can be easily generalized to other open quantum dynamical models.
Many physical and chemical processes in a condensed phase environment exhibit non-Markovian quantum dynamics. As such simulations are challenging on classical computers, we developed a variational quantum algorithm that is capable of simulating non-Markovian dynamics on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. We used a quantum system linearly coupled to its harmonic bath as the model Hamiltonian. The non-Markovianity is captured by introducing auxiliary variables from the bath trajectories. With Monte Carlo sampling of the bath degrees of freedom, finite temperature dynamics is produced. We validated the algorithm on a simulator and demonstrated its performance on an IBM quantum device. The framework developed naturally adapts to any anharmonic bath with non-linear coupling to the system, and is also well suited for simulating spin chain dynamics in a dissipative environment.
Phase-space methods are powerful tools for the treatment of Markovian open quantum systems: they map the reduced dynamics of a system S, in interaction with an environment E, exactly onto Langevin equations for c-number stochastic variables, as opposed to Heisenberg-Langevin equations for operators. Langevin equations provide analytical insight in key regimes and excel at handling strong nonlinearities and couplings, where other methods often falter. Extending phase-space methods to non-Markovian dynamics, however, has remained a long-standing challenge. Here we address this gap by applying phase-space representations to the full S+E system; integrating out the environmental degrees of freedom then yields a general Langevin framework for S that incorporates both deterministic and stochastic contributions from E. Normally ordered representations, such as the Glauber-Sudarshan P representation and its positive variant due to Drummond and Gardiner, lead to Langevin equations in which (i) non-Markovian effects emerge exclusively in the deterministic terms, via a memory kernel, and (ii) noise contributions vanish when E is initially in the vacuum state. To demonstrate the power of this framework, we address the paradigmatic problem of delayed coherent feedback, in which the system is driven by its own past state, and study its impact on the laser linewidth: we recover the narrowing observed well above threshold and predict an enhanced narrowing just above it. Crucially, the number of stochastic variables scales linearly with the system size, making the framework suitable for problems ranging from a few degrees of freedom to genuinely many-body systems. This opens the way to the systematic study of non-Markovian driven-dissipative quantum systems using the same analytical and numerical tools that have long made phase-space methods so successful in the Markovian regime.