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arXiv:2005.14594 · Physical Review A

Purity speed limit of open quantum systems from magic subspaces

A. A. Dìaz V., Vardan Martikyan, Steffen J. Glaser, Dominique Sugny

Published Sep 8, 2020• 7 citations
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Abstract

We introduce the concept of magic subspaces for the control of dissipative $N$- level quantum systems whose dynamics are governed by the Lindblad equation. For a given purity, these subspaces can be defined as the set of density matrices for which the rate of purity change is maximum or minimum. Adding fictitious control fields to the system so two density operators with the same purity can be connected in a very short time, we show that magic subspaces allow us to derive a purity speed limit, which only depends on the relaxation rates. We emphasize the superiority of this limit with respect to established bounds and its tightness in the case of a two-level dissipative quantum system. The link between the speed limit and the corresponding time-optimal solution is discussed in the framework of this study. Explicit examples are described for two- and three-level quantum systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.102.033104

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We introduce the concept of magic subspaces for the control of dissipative NNN- level quantum systems whose dynamics are governed by the Lindblad equation. For a given purity, these subspaces can be defined as the set of density matrices for which the rate of purity change is maximum or minimum. Adding fictitious control fields to the system so two density operators with the same purity can be connected in a very short time, we show that magic subspaces allow us to derive a purity speed limit, which only depends on the relaxation rates. We emphasize the superiority of this limit with respect to established bounds and its tightness in the case of a two-level dissipative quantum system. The link between the speed limit and the corresponding time-optimal solution is discussed in the framework of this study. Explicit examples are described for two- and three-level quantum systems.
One of the defining properties of an open quantum system is the variation of its purity in time. We derive speed limits on the rate of purity change for systems coupled to a Markovian environment. Our speed limits are based on Liouville space where density matrices are represented as vectors. This approach leads to speed limits that are always tighter compared to their parallel speed limits in Hilbert space. These bounds depend solely on the generators of the nonunitary dynamics and are independent of the particular state of the systems. Thus, they are perfectly suited to investigate dephasing, thermalization, and decorrelation processes of arbitrary states. We show that our speed limits can be attained and are therefore tight. As an application of our results we study dephasing of interacting spins, and the speed of classical and quantum correlation erasure in multi-particle system.
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We study time-minimum optimal control for a class of quantum two-dimensional dissipative systems whose dynamics are governed by the Lindblad equation and where control inputs acts only in the Hamiltonian. The dynamics of the control system are analyzed as a bi-linear control system on the Bloch ball after a decoupling of such dynamics into intra- and inter-unitary orbits. The (singular) control problem consists of finding a trajectory of the state variables solving a radial equation in the minimum amount of time, starting at the completely mixed state and ending at the state with the maximum achievable purity.The boundary value problem determined by the time-minimum singular optimal control problem is studied numerically. If controls are unbounded, simulations show that multiple local minimal solutions might exist. To find the unique globally minimal solution, we must repeat the algorithm for various initial conditions and find the best solution out of all of the candidates. If controls are bounded, optimal controls are given by bang-bang controls using the Pontryagin minimum principle. Using a switching map we construct optimal solutions consisting of singular arcs. If controls are bounded, the analysis of our model also implies classical analysis done previously for this problem.
The objective of this work is to study time-minimum and energy-minimum global optimal control for dissipative open quantum systems whose dynamics is governed by the Lindblad equation. The controls appear only in the Hamiltonian. Using recent results regarding the decoupling of such dissipative dynamics into intra- and inter-unitary orbits, we transform the control system into a bi-linear control system on the Bloch ball (the unitary sphere together with its interior). We then design a numerical algorithm to construct an optimal path to achieve a desired point given initial states close to the origin (the singular point) of the Bloch ball. This is done both for the minimum-time and minimum-energy control problems.
We study the problem of optimal control of dissipative quantum dynamics. Although under most circumstances dissipation leads to an increase in entropy (or a decrease in purity) of the system, there is an important class of problems for which dissipation with external control can decrease the entropy (or increase the purity) of the system. An important example is laser cooling. In such systems, there is an interplay of the Hamiltonian part of the dynamics, which is controllable, and the dissipative part of the dynamics, which is uncontrollable. The strategy is to control the Hamiltonian portion of the evolution in such a way that the dissipation causes the purity of the system to increase rather than decrease. The goal of this paper is to find the strategy that leads to maximal purity at the final time. Under the assumption that Hamiltonian control is complete and arbitrarily fast, we provide a general framework by which to calculate optimal cooling strategies. These assumptions lead to a great simplification, in which the control problem can be reformulated in terms of the spectrum of eigenvalues of $\ensuremath{\rho}$, rather than $\ensuremath{\rho}$ itself. By combining this formulation with the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman theorem we are able to obtain an equation for the globally optimal cooling strategy in terms of the spectrum of the density matrix. For the three-level $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ system, we provide a complete analytic solution for the optimal cooling strategy. For this system it is found that the optimal strategy does not exploit system coherences and is a ``greedy'' strategy, in which the purity is increased maximally at each instant.