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arXiv:2011.00735

Comment on "Universal Lindblad equation for open quantum systems"

Jae Sung Lee, Joonhyun Yeo

Published Nov 2, 2020• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this Comment, we show that the thermal Gibbs state given in terms of a time-independent system Hamiltonian is not a steady state solution of the quantum master equation introduced by Nathan and Rudner [Phys. Rev. B 102, 115109 (2020)], in contrast to their claim.
DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2011.00735

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In a recent comment, Lee and Yeo show that the Gibbs state is not generically an exact steady state of the Universal Lindblad Equation (ULE) that we developed in Phys. Rev. B 102, 115109 (2020). This non-controversial observation is precisely as expected for open quantum systems with finite system-bath coupling, where transition rates may be comparable to or larger than the level spacing of the system, and we made no claim to the contrary in our paper. The comment by Lee and Yeo hence highlights that the ULE captures contributions to the steady state due to finite system-bath coupling that are beyond the reach of master equations that rely on rotating wave approximations. In this response we further clarify the nature of our analytical and numerical results.
Open quantum systems are ubiquitous, however, their description beyond ultraweak system-bath coupling is challenging. The standard Redfield master equation can violate positivity. Recently, Nathan and Rudner proposed an alternative equation, not suffering from this problem. The authors compare here both equations to the exact solution of a simple model. The Redfield equation performs noticeably better for transient dynamics. For the steady state it is slightly better for high temperatures, but fails at low temperatures, where the Nathan-Rudner equation is still accurate.
Abstract Quantum master equations are widely used to describe the dynamics of open quantum systems. All these different master equations rely on specific approximations that may or may not be justified. Starting from a microscopic model, applying the standard Born and Markov approximations results in the Redfield equation that does not guarantee to preserve positivity. The latter is typically achieved by additionally applying the secular approximation resulting in a quantum master equation in Lindblad form. There are other ways to obtain an equation in Lindblad form, one of which is the recently proposed universal Lindblad equation (ULE). It has been shown that it is in the same equivalence class of approximations as the Redfield master equation although avoiding the heuristic secular approximation (Nathan and Rudner 2020 Phys. Rev. B 102 115109). In this work, we prove that the solutions of the master equation obtained by applying the secular approximation are also obtained by an approximation of the same order as the one performed to obtain the Redfield equation. We hereby provide a mathematical justification for the secular approximation. We show that the result of applying the secular approximation is obtained naturally by applying a self-consistency argument. This shows that the resulting master equation is also in the same equivalence class of approximations as the Redfield master equation and the ULE. We furthermore give numerical considerations about the accuracy of the secular master equation compared to the ULE.
It is a central problem in various fields of physics to elucidate the behavior of quantum many-body systems subjected to bulk dissipation. In this context, several microscopic derivations of the Lindblad quantum master equation for many-body systems have been proposed so far. Among them, the universal Lindblad equation derived by Nathan and Rudner is fascinating because it has the desired locality and its derivation seems to rely solely on the assumption that the bath correlation time is much shorter than the dissipation time, which is the case in the weak-coupling limit or the singular-coupling limit. However, it remains elusive whether errors from several approximations in deriving the universal Lindblad equation remain small during the time evolution in the thermodynamic limit. Here, rigorous error bounds on the time evolution of a local quantity are given, and it is shown that, under the assumption of accelerated dissipation in bulk-dissipated systems, those errors vanish in the weak-coupling limit or the singular-coupling limit after taking the thermodynamic limit.
The celebrated Lindblad equation governs the nonunitary time evolution of density operators used in the description of open quantum systems. It is usually derived from the von Neumann equation for a large system, at given physical conditions, when a small subsystem is explicitly singled out and the rest of the system acts as an environment whose degrees of freedom are traced out. In the specific case of a subsystem with variable particle number, the equilibrium density operator is given by the well-known grand canonical Gibbs state. Consequently, solving the Lindblad equation in this case should automatically yield, without any additional assumptions, the corresponding density operator in the limiting case of statistical equilibrium. Current studies of the Lindblad equation with varying particle number assume, however, the grand canonical Gibbs state a priori: the chemical potential is externally imposed rather than derived from first principles, and hence the corresponding density operator is not obtained as a natural solution of the equation. In this work, we investigate the compatibility of grand canonical statistical mechanics with the derivation of the Lindblad equation. We propose an alternative and complementary approach to the current literature that consists in using a generalized system Hamiltonian which includes a term μN. In a previous paper, this empirically well-known term has been formally derived from the von Neumann equation for the specific case of equilibrium. Including μN in the system Hamiltonian leads to a modified Lindblad equation which yields the grand canonical state as a natural solution, meaning that all the quantities involved are obtained from the physics of the system without any external assumptions.
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.