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arXiv:2201.07812 · Physical Review A

Holevo skew divergence for the characterization of information backflow

Andrea Smirne, Nina Megier, Bassano Vacchini

Published Jul 11, 2022• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The interpretation of non-Markovian effects as due to the information exchange between an open quantum system and its environment has been recently formulated in terms of properly regularized entropic quantities, as their revivals in time can be upper bounded by means of quantities describing the storage of information outside the open system [N. Megier et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 030401 (2021)]. Here we elaborate on the wider mathematical framework of the theory, specifying the key properties that allow us to associate distinguishability quantifiers with the information flow from and toward the open system. We point to the Holevo quantity as a distinguished quantum divergence to which the formalism can be applied and we show how several distinct quantifiers of non-Markovianity can be related to each other within this general framework. Finally, we apply our analysis to two relevant physical models in which an exact evaluation of all quantities can be performed.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.106.012205

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The interpretation of non-Markovian effects as due to the information exchange between an open quantum system and its environment has been recently formulated in terms of properly regularized entropic quantities, as their revivals in time can be upper bounded by means of quantities describing the storage of information outside the open system [N. Megier et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 030401 (2021)]. Here we elaborate on the wider mathematical framework of the theory, specifying the key properties that allow us to associate distinguishability quantifiers with the information flow from and toward the open system. We point to the Holevo quantity as a distinguished quantum divergence to which the formalism can be applied and we show how several distinct quantifiers of non-Markovianity can be related to each other within this general framework. Finally, we apply our analysis to two relevant physical models in which an exact evaluation of all quantities can be performed.
Recently, a measure for the non-Markovian behavior of quantum processes in open systems has been developed, which is based on the quantification of the flow of information between the open system and its environment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 210401 (2009)]. The information flow is connected to the rate of change of the trace distance between quantum states, which can be interpreted in terms of the distinguishability of these states. Here, we elaborate the mathematical details of this theory, present applications to specific physical models, and discuss further theoretical and experimental implications as well as relations to alternative approaches proposed recently.
In the dynamics of open quantum systems, the backflow of information to the reduced system under study has been suggested as the actual physical mechanism inducing memory and thus leading to non-Markovian quantum dynamics. To this aim, the trace-distance revivals between distinct evolved system states have been shown to be subordinated to the establishment of system-environment correlations or changes in the environmental state. We show that this interpretation can be substantiated also for a class of entropic quantifiers. We exploit a suitably regularized version of Umegaki's quantum relative entropy, known as telescopic relative entropy, that is tightly connected to the quantum Jensen-Shannon divergence. In particular, we derive general upper bounds on the telescopic relative entropy revivals conditioned and determined by the formation of correlations and changes in the environment. We illustrate our findings by means of examples, considering in particular the Jaynes-Cummings model and a phase covariant dynamics.
We analyze and compare different measures for the degree of non-Markovianity in the dynamics of open quantum systems. These measures are based on the distinguishability of quantum states, which is quantified, on the one hand, by the trace distance or, more generally, by the trace norm of the Helstrom matrix and, on the other hand, by entropic quantifiers: the Jensen-Shannon divergence and the Holevo or quantum skew divergence. We explicitly construct a qubit dynamics for which the trace-norm-based non-Markovianity measure is nonzero, while all the entropic measures turn out to be zero. This leads to the surprising conclusion that the non-Markovianity measure which employs the trace norm of the Helstrom matrix is strictly stronger than all entropic non-Markovianity measures.
Exchange of information between a quantum system and its surrounding environment plays a fundamental role in the study of the dynamics of open quantum systems. Here we discuss the role of the information exchange in the non-Markovian behavior of dynamical quantum processes following the decoherence approach, where we consider a quantum system that is initially correlated with its measurement apparatus, which in turn interacts with the environment. We introduce a way of looking at the information exchange between the system and environment using the quantum loss, which is shown to be closely related to the measure of non-Markovianity based on the quantum mutual information. We also extend the results of Fanchini et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 210402 (2014)] in several directions, providing a more detailed investigation of the use of the accessible information for quantifying the backflow of information from the environment to the system. Moreover, we reveal a clear conceptual relation between the entanglement- and mutual-information-based measures of non-Markovianity in terms of the quantum loss and accessible information. We compare different ways of studying the information flow in two theoretical examples. We also present experimental results on the investigation of the quantum loss and accessible information for a two-level system undergoing a zero temperature amplitude damping process. We use an optical approach that allows full access to the state of the environment.
We introduce an alternative method based on local quantum uncertainty to measure non-Markovianity for an open quantum system. The local quantum uncertainty proposed by Girolami etalet aletal. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 240402 (2013)] is defined by the minimum skew information from a local measurement perspective. The measure effectively captures the characteristics of non-Markovianity and has a clearly physical interpretation: in correlated bipartite systems, the non-Markovian (Markovian) process of a considered open subsystem corresponds to the increase (decrease) of quantum uncertainty of local observables of another measured free subsystem. Then the local quantum uncertainty is further discussed by carefully handling the square root of the density operator for the bipartite $2\ensuremath{\bigotimes}d$ systems. Specifically, for a two-qubit system we give an explicit expression of the local quantum uncertainty. Furthermore, by applying the measure to three typical non-Markovian noise channels, we find that the conditions of detecting the non-Markovianity are consistent with the results of existing measures for non-Markovianity, i.e., information backflow and divisibility.
We construct a general measure for the degree of non-Markovian behavior in open quantum systems. This measure is based on the trace distance which quantifies the distinguishability of quantum states. It represents a functional of the dynamical map describing the time evolution of physical states, and can be interpreted in terms of the information flow between the open system and its environment. The measure takes on nonzero values whenever there is a flow of information from the environment back to the open system, which is the key feature of non-Markovian dynamics.