We introduce the notion of a reverse quantum speed limit for arbitrary quantum evolution which answers a fundamental question: How slowly can a quantum system evolve in time? Using the geometrical approach to quantum mechanics, the reverse speed limit follows from the fact that the gauge-invariant length of the reference section is always greater than the Fubini-Study distance on the projective Hilbert space of the quantum system. We illustrate the reverse speed limit for two-level quantum systems with an external driving Hamiltonian and show that our results hold well. We find several examples where our bound is tight. We also find one practical application of the reverse speed limit in the discharging process of quantum batteries, which answers the following question: How slowly can quantum batteries discharge? Our result provides a lower bound on the average discharging power of quantum batteries.
We introduce the notion of a reverse quantum speed limit for arbitrary quantum evolution which answers a fundamental question: How slowly can a quantum system evolve in time? Using the geometrical approach to quantum mechanics, the reverse speed limit follows from the fact that the gauge-invariant length of the reference section is always greater than the Fubini-Study distance on the projective Hilbert space of the quantum system. We illustrate the reverse speed limit for two-level quantum systems with an external driving Hamiltonian and show that our results hold well. We find several examples where our bound is tight. We also find one practical application of the reverse speed limit in the discharging process of quantum batteries, which answers the following question: How slowly can quantum batteries discharge? Our result provides a lower bound on the average discharging power of quantum batteries.
How fast an observable can evolve in time is answered by so-called observable speed limit. Here, we prove a stronger version of the observable speed limit and show that the previously obtained bound is a special case of the new bound. The stronger quantum speed limit for the state also follows from the stronger quantum speed limit for observables (SQSLO). We apply this to prove a stronger bound for the entanglement rate using the notion of capacity of entanglement (the quantum information theoretic counterpart of the heat capacity) and show that it outperforms previous bounds. Furthermore, we apply the SQSLO for the rate of modular Hamiltonian and in the context of interacting qubits in a quantum battery. These illustrative examples reveal that the speed limit for the modular energy and the time required to charge the battery can be exactly predicted using the new bound. This shows that for estimating the charging time of quantum battery SQSLO is actually tight, i.e., it saturates. Our findings can have important applications in quantum thermodynamics, the complexity of operator growth, predicting the time rate of quantum correlation growth, and quantum technology, in general.
We introduce a quantum charging distance as the minimal time that it takes to reach one state (charged state) from another state (depleted state) via a unitary evolution, assuming limits on the resources invested into the driving Hamiltonian. For pure states it is equal to the Bures angle, while for mixed states its computation leads to an optimization problem. Thus, we also derive easily computable bounds on this quantity. The charging distance tightens the known bound on the mean charging power of a quantum battery, it quantifies the quantum charging advantage, and it leads to an always achievable quantum speed limit. In contrast with other similar quantities, the charging distance does not depend on the eigenvalues of the density matrix, it depends only on the corresponding eigenspaces. This research formalizes and interprets quantum charging in a geometric way, and provides a measurable quantity that one can optimize to maximize the speed of charging of future quantum batteries.
As one of the fundamental questions, quantum speed limit (QSL) is of vital role in the community of quantum physics, which sets the ultimate, maximal speed with which a quantum system can evolve. QSL originated from the understanding of the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. In 1945, Mandelstam and Tamm found the time Δt in the celebrated relation ΔEΔt≥ℏ could be thought as the minimum time that a quantum system needs to evolve from an initial state to the orthogonal state for unitary evolution. QSL sets the lower bound of the evolution. They established the relationship between the minimum evolution time ( τQSL ) and the energy uncertainty of the system (ΔE), namely τQSL=πℏ/(2ΔE) , the Mandelstam-Tamm (MT) bound. Later, Margolus and Levitin derived another different bound for a closed system which connected the τQSL with the average energy of the system ( 〈E〉 ), i.e., τQSL=πℏ/(2〈E〉) , the Margolus-Levitin (ML) bound. Combining the MT and ML bounds together, we can have a unified bound for a unitary system and orthogonal states. In the case of open system dynamics, because there is energy and/or coherence exchange between the system and the environment, the orthogonal final state of the initial state can hardly be reached any longer. An investigation of the QSL on non-unitary quantum evolution needs to be considered. The generalized QSLs are established by employing the distance between the distinguishable states. Different metrics define different distances, leading to different QSL bounds. We show a few typical generalized QSL bounds based on different metrics. And the unified QSL bound for non-unitary evolution is obtained by combining the generalized MT and ML bounds under the same metric. The generations and developments of QSL have successfully generalized the MT bounds. Even the ML bounds have been attempted to generalize, the current studies of ML bound are thought as the significantly harder task, and keep as the open questions. The influences of external environment and quantum system dynamics which include the role of entanglement in QSL for open dynamics and many-body systems, the relation between the maximum interaction speed and QSL in quantum spin systems, the non-Markovianity effect of the environment on accelerating the speed of evolution have been investigated. Furthermore, by employing the gauge invariant distance in the Riemannian metric, we establish a distinct QSL bound, which relates the quantum speed limit time to the geometry phase, and presents the geometric and gauge invariant properties of it. The bound shows the impacts of the transmission modes of the state vectors on the evolution path in the manifold. Different from the established MT and ML bounds, our bound establishes the relation between the QSL and the Pancharatnam connection 1-form, and our results show that the QSL can be controlled via manipulating the generalized Pahcharatnam connection. Also, our results of QSL are holonomy via the generalized Pahcharatnam connection, which show us a possible technique to speed up the holonomic quantum computation. The bound is also interesting to the metrology and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, etc. QSL has also been studied in the quantum representation of Wigner function. In the future research of quantum speed limit, there are many issues that need to be considered, such as the generalized ML bound, the unified QSL bound under different metrics, the application of maximum rate of quantum information derived from the QSL, and the relation between the quantum speed limit and the quantum heat engine, etc.
The quantum speed limit sets a fundamental restriction on the evolution time of quantum systems. We explore the relationship between quantum imaginarity and the quantum speed limit by utilizing measures such as relative entropy, trace distance, and geometric imaginarity. These speed limits define the fundamental constraints on the minimum time necessary for quantum systems to evolve under various dynamical processes. As applications the dephasing dynamics and dissipative dynamics are analyzed in detail. The quantum speed limit in stochastic-approximate transformations is also investigated. Our quantum speed limits provide lower bounds on how fast a physical system evolves to attain or lose certain imaginarity, with potential applications in efficient quantum computation designs, quantum control and quantum sensing.
Let us have a Hamiltonian H and 2 states which can time evolve into each other via this Hamiltonian. In this particular situation, say one of the states evolves into the other in time t. Now let us fix these two states ; then we may have infinite Hamiltonians (other than H, and one of them is say H') that can time evolve one of them into the other. But the time taken for this evolution varies from t and is say t' (that is, t' is the time Hamiltonian H' takes to time evolve one of the fixed states into the other). From now on, we shall consider only those Hamiltonians that can time evolve one of the states into the other. The question is given any small positive number a, will there exist a Hamiltonian H such that t' = a? Answer: Yes , the Hamiltonian Ht/a (obtained by rescaling the original Hamiltonian) will work. But, there are bounds that show that as long as the average energy and its fluctuations are bounded (thus, no rescaling allowed), you cannot go arbitrarily fast from one state to another orthogonal state. This discussion falls under the study of quantum speed limits. This document looks into this field of active research. We shall study with care how the question of a speed limit arises: from varying the Hamiltonians between two fixed states ; and hence produce an accurate speed limit between any two fixed states. The process and results shall develop as concretely and smoothly as the problem which is produced.
In general, quantum systems most likely undergo open-system dynamics due to their smallness and sensitivity. Energy storage devices, so-called quantum batteries, are not excluded from this phenomenon. Here, we study fundamental bounds on the power of open quantum batteries from the geometric point of view. By defining an activity operator, a tight upper bound on the charging power is derived for the open quantum batteries in terms of the fluctuations of the activity operator and the quantum Fisher information. The variance of the activity operator may be interpreted as a generalized thermodynamic force, while the quantum Fisher information describes the speed of evolution in the state space of the battery. The thermodynamic interpretation of the upper bound is discussed in detail. As an example, a model for the battery, taking into account the environmental effects, is proposed, and the effect of dissipation and decoherence during the charging process on both the stored work and the charging power is investigated. Our results show that the upper bound is saturated in some time intervals. Also, the maximum value of both the stored work and the corresponding power is achieved in the non-Markovian underdamped regime.