Characterizing the most efficient evolution, the quantum speed limit (QSL) plays a significant role in quantum technology. How to generalize the well-established QSL from closed systems to open systems has attracted much attention. In contrast to the previous schemes to derive the QSL from the reduced dynamics of open systems, we propose a QSL bound from the point of view of the total system consisting of the open system and its environment using a quantum-state-diffusion method. The application of our scheme to a two-level system reveals that the system possesses an infinite speedup capacity in the noiseless case, which is destroyed by the environment under the Born-Markovian approximation. It is interesting to find that the capacity in the noiseless case is recovered in the non-Markovian dynamics as long as a bound state is formed in the energy spectrum of the total system. Enriching the characterization schemes of the QSL, our result provides an efficient way to control the QSL of open systems.
Characterizing the most efficient evolution, the quantum speed limit (QSL) plays a significant role in quantum technology. How to generalize the well-established QSL from closed systems to open systems has attracted much attention. In contrast to the previous schemes to derive the QSL from the reduced dynamics of open systems, we propose a QSL bound from the point of view of the total system consisting of the open system and its environment using a quantum-state-diffusion method. The application of our scheme to a two-level system reveals that the system possesses an infinite speedup capacity in the noiseless case, which is destroyed by the environment under the Born-Markovian approximation. It is interesting to find that the capacity in the noiseless case is recovered in the non-Markovian dynamics as long as a bound state is formed in the energy spectrum of the total system. Enriching the characterization schemes of the QSL, our result provides an efficient way to control the QSL of open systems.
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.
Abstract The time required for a given quantum system to evolve is known as the quantum speed limit (QSL), which can be used to characterize the speed of evolution of a quantum system. We study QSL time for Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics. Investigating the effect of QSL under non-unitary evolution is of fundamental interest. In this work, we derive QSL time for maximally entangled state and apply its results under various noise channels. We discuss measure of QSL, how correlations affect the rate of QSL. Further, we carried an investigation on connection between non-Markovianity and QSL. We show that the non Markovian evolution can speed up quantum evolution, therefore lead to smaller QSL time. We have established the connections between correlated channels, information loss and non-Markovianity. This theory may suggest some further connections to retrieve back information from surrounding and preserves decoherence.
In recent years, the idea of reachable-set characterization based on the quantum speed limit (QSL) was proposed by Arenz et al. [New J. Phys. 19, 103015 (2017)]; that is, the reachable set of the target unitary gate in a closed qubit system can be characterized by considering the QSL as the necessary condition that the control setup must satisfy in order to achieve the goal. Inspired by this idea, in this paper we characterize a general Markovian open quantum system based on the QSL derived by Kobayashi and Yamamoto [Phys. Rev. A 102, 042606 (2020)]. Note that this bound is not only explicitly computable with respect to system parameters but also tighter than the other bounds. Some examples for demonstrating this analysis will be given.
The quantum speed limit (QSL) is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics, providing a lower bound on the evolution time. The attainability of the QSL, which greatly depends on the understanding of the QSL, is a long-standing open problem, especially for high-dimensional systems. In this paper, we solve this problem by establishing a QSL suitable and attainable for both open and closed quantum systems based on a new proposed state distance. It is shown that, given any initial state in a certain finite dimension, unitary and nonunitary dynamics can always be found to attain our QSL bound in the corresponding dimension, and for any given Hamiltonian for a unitary evolution a pair of states always exists, attaining the bound. As applications, we demonstrate the QSL time attained by various physical settings. This paper will shed light on the QSL problems.
According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle between time and energy fluctuation, a concept of the quantum speed limit (QSL) has been established to determine the minimum evolutionary time between quantum states. Considerable theoretical and experimental efforts are invested in obtaining the QSL time bounds in various scenarios. However, it remains a long-standing goal to derive a meaningful QSL bound for a general quantum problem. Here, we propose a geometrical approach to derive a QSL bound for closed and open quantum systems. By solving a quantum brachistochrone problem in the framework of the Riemannian metric, we show that the QSL between a given initial state and a final state is determined not only by the entire dynamics of the system but also by the individual dynamics of a critical parameter. We exemplify the utility of the bound in three representative scenarios, demonstrating a pronounced advantage in finding a tight and meaningful QSL bound of a general quantum evolution problem.
Quantum speed limits (QSLs) establish intrinsic bounds on the minimum time required for the evolution of quantum systems. We present a class of QSLs formulated in terms of the two-parameter Sharma-Mittal entropy (SME), applicable to finite-dimensional systems evolving under general nonunitary dynamics. In the single-qubit case, the QSLs for both quantum channels and non-Hermitian dynamics are analyzed in detail. For many-body systems, we explore the role of SME-based bounds in characterizing the reduced dynamics and apply the results to the XXZ spin chain model. These entropy-based QSLs characterize fundamental limits on quantum evolution speeds and may be employed in contexts including entropic uncertainty relations, quantum metrology, coherent control and quantum sensing.