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arXiv:2207.03108 · Physical review. E

Perturbative steady states of completely positive quantum master equations

Jae Sung Lee, Joonhyun Yeo

Published Nov 21, 2022• 13 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Lindblad form guarantees complete positivity of a Markovian quantum master equation (QME). However, its microscopic derivation for a quantum system weakly interacting with a thermal bath requires several approximations, which may result in inaccuracies in the QME. Recently, various Lindbladian QMEs were derived without resorting to the secular approximation from the Redfield equation which does not guarantee the complete positivity. Here we explicitly calculate, in a perturbative manner, the equilibrium steady states of these Lindbladian QMEs. We compare the results with the steady state of the Redfield equation obtained from an analytic continuation method, which coincides with the so-called mean force Gibbs (MFG) state. The MFG state is obtained by integrating out the bath degrees of freedom for the Gibbs state of the total Hamiltonian. We explicitly show that the steady states of the Lindbladian QMEs are different from the MFG state. Our results indicate that manipulations of the Redfield equation needed to enforce complete positivity of a QME drives its steady state away from the MFG state. We also find that, in the high-temperature regime, both the steady states of the Lindbladian QMEs and MFG state reduce to the same Gibbs state of a system Hamiltonian under certain conditions.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.106.054145

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The Lindblad form guarantees complete positivity of a Markovian quantum master equation (QME). However, its microscopic derivation for a quantum system weakly interacting with a thermal bath requires several approximations, which may result in inaccuracies in the QME. Recently, various Lindbladian QMEs were derived without resorting to the secular approximation from the Redfield equation which does not guarantee the complete positivity. Here we explicitly calculate, in a perturbative manner, the equilibrium steady states of these Lindbladian QMEs. We compare the results with the steady state of the Redfield equation obtained from an analytic continuation method, which coincides with the so-called mean force Gibbs (MFG) state. The MFG state is obtained by integrating out the bath degrees of freedom for the Gibbs state of the total Hamiltonian. We explicitly show that the steady states of the Lindbladian QMEs are different from the MFG state. Our results indicate that manipulations of the Redfield equation needed to enforce complete positivity of a QME drives its steady state away from the MFG state. We also find that, in the high-temperature regime, both the steady states of the Lindbladian QMEs and MFG state reduce to the same Gibbs state of a system Hamiltonian under certain conditions.
It is very common in the literature to write a Markovian quantum master equation in Lindblad form to describe a system with multiple degrees of freedom and weakly connected to multiple thermal baths which can, in general, be at different temperatures and chemical potentials. However, the microscopically derived quantum master equation up to leading order in a system-bath coupling is of the so-called Redfield form, which is known to not preserve complete positivity in most cases. Additional approximations to the Redfield equation are required to obtain a Lindblad form. We lay down some fundamental requirements for any further approximations to the Redfield equation, which, if violated, leads to physical inconsistencies such as inaccuracies in the leading order populations and coherences in the energy eigenbasis, violation of thermalization, and violation of local conservation laws at the nonequilibrium steady state. We argue that one or more of these conditions will generically be violated in all the weak system-bath-coupling Lindblad descriptions existing in the literature to our knowledge. As an example, we study the recently derived universal Lindblad equation and use these conditions to show the violation of local conservation laws due to inaccurate coherences but accurate populations in the energy eigenbasis. Finally, we exemplify our analytical results numerically in an interacting open quantum spin system.
We investigate the possibility of a Markovian quantum master equation (QME) that consistently describes a finite-dimensional system, a part of which is weakly coupled to a thermal bath. To preserve complete positivity and trace, such a QME must be of Lindblad form. For physical consistency, it should additionally preserve local conservation laws and be able to show thermalization. We search for Lindblad equations satisfying these additional criteria. First, we show that the microscopically derived Bloch-Redfield equation violates complete positivity unless in extremely special cases. We then prove that imposing complete positivity and demanding preservation of local conservation laws enforces the Lindblad operators and the lamb-shift Hamiltonian to be local, i.e., to be supported only on the part of the system directly coupled to the bath. We then cast the problem of finding local Lindblad QMEs which can show thermalization into a semidefinite program. We call this the thermalization optimization problem (TOP). For given system parameters and temperature, the solution of the TOP conclusively shows whether the desired type of QME is possible up to a given precision. Whenever possible, it also outputs a form for such a QME. For an XXZ chain of a few qubits, fixing a reasonably high precision, we find that such a QME is impossible over a considerably wide parameter regime when only the first qubit is coupled to the bath. Remarkably, we find that when the first two qubits are attached to the bath, such a QME becomes possible over much of the same parameter regime, including a wide range of temperatures.
We put forth a new class of quantum master equations that correctly reproduce the asymptotic state of an open quantum system beyond the infinitesimally weak system-bath coupling limit. Our method is based on incorporating the knowledge of the reduced steady state into its dynamics. The correction not only steers the reduced system toward a correct steady state but also improves the accuracy of the dynamics, thereby refining the archetypal Born-Markov weak-coupling second-order master equations. In case of equilibrium, we use the exact mean-force Gibbs state to correct the Redfield quantum master equation. By benchmarking it with the exact solution of the damped harmonic oscillator, we show that our method also helps correct the long-standing issue of positivity violation, albeit without complete positivity. Our method of a canonically consistent quantum master equation opens a new perspective in the theory of open quantum systems leading to a reduced density matrix accurate beyond the commonly used Redfield and Lindblad equations, while retaining the same conceptual and numerical complexity.
Starting from a microscopic system-baths description, we derive the general conditions for a time-local quantum master equation (QME) to satisfy the first and second laws of thermodynamics at the fluctuating level. Using counting statistics, we show that the fluctuating second law can be rephrased as a generalized quantum detailed balance condition (GQDB), i.e., a symmetry of the time-local generators which ensures the validity of the fluctuation theorem. When requiring in addition a strict system-bath energy conservation, the GQDB reduces to the usual notion of detailed balance which characterizes QMEs with Gibbsian steady states. However, if energy conservation is only required on average, QMEs with non-Gibbsian steady states can still maintain a certain level of thermodynamic consistency. Applying our theory to commonly used QMEs, we show that the Redfield equation breaks the GQDB, and that some recently derived approximation schemes based on the Redfield equation (which hold beyond the secular approximation and allow one to derive a QME of Lindblad form) satisfy the GQDB and the average first law. We find that performing the secular approximation is the only way to ensure the first and second laws at the fluctuating level.
We develop a method of calculating the nonequilibrium steady state (NESS) of an open quantum system that is weakly coupled to reservoirs in different equilibrium states. We describe the system using a Redfield-type quantum master equation (QME). We decompose the Redfield QME into a Lindblad-type QME and the remaining part R\mathcal{R}R. Regarding the steady state of the Lindblad QME as the unperturbed solution, we perform a perturbative calculation with respect to R\mathcal{R}R to obtain the NESS of the Redfield QME. The NESS thus determined is exact up to the first order in the system-reservoir coupling strength (pump/loss rate), which is the same as the order of validity of the QME. An advantage of the proposed method in numerical computation is its applicability to systems larger than those in methods of directly solving the original Redfield QME. We apply the method to a noninteracting fermion system to obtain an analytical expression of the NESS density matrix. We also numerically demonstrate the method in a nonequilibrium quantum spin chain.
We present the Born-Markov approximated Redfield quantum master equation (RQME) description for an open system of noninteracting particles (bosons or fermions) on an arbitrary lattice of NNN sites in any dimension and weakly connected to multiple reservoirs at different temperatures and chemical potentials. The RQME can be reduced to the Lindblad equation, of various forms, by making further approximations. By studying the N=2N=2N=2 case, we show that RQME gives results which agree with exact analytical results for steady-state properties and with exact numerics for time-dependent properties over a wide range of parameters. In comparison, the Lindblad equations have a limited domain of validity in nonequilibrium. We conclude that it is indeed justified to use microscopically derived full RQME to go beyond the limitations of Lindblad equations in out-of-equilibrium systems. We also derive closed-form analytical results for out-of-equilibrium time dynamics of two-point correlation functions. These results explicitly show the approach to steady state and thermalization. These results are experimentally relevant for cold atoms, cavity QED, and far-from-equilibrium quantum dot experiments.