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arXiv:2211.04400 · SciPost Physics

A time-dependent regularization of the Redfield equation

Antonio D’Abbruzzo, Vasco Cavina, Vittorio Giovannetti

Published Sep 27, 2023• 18 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We introduce a new regularization of the Redfield equation based on a replacement of the Kossakowski matrix with its closest positive semidefinite neighbor. Unlike most of the existing approaches, this procedure is capable of retaining the time dependence of the Kossakowski matrix, leading to a completely positive divisible quantum process. Using the dynamics of an exactly-solvable three-level open system as a reference, we show that our approach performs better during the transient evolution, if compared to other approaches like the partial secular master equation or the universal Lindblad equation. To make the comparison between different regularization schemes independent from the initial state, we introduce a new quantitative approach based on the Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphys.15.3.117

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arXiv:2003.09063•Quantum•Sep 21, 2020•63 citations
We introduce a new regularization of the Redfield equation based on a replacement of the Kossakowski matrix with its closest positive semidefinite neighbor. Unlike most of the existing approaches, this procedure is capable of retaining the time dependence of the Kossakowski matrix, leading to a completely positive divisible quantum process. Using the dynamics of an exactly-solvable three-level open system as a reference, we show that our approach performs better during the transient evolution, if compared to other approaches like the partial secular master equation or the universal Lindblad equation. To make the comparison between different regularization schemes independent from the initial state, we introduce a new quantitative approach based on the Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism.
A relevant problem in the theory of open quantum systems is the lack of complete positivity of dynamical maps obtained after weak-coupling approximations, a famous example being the Redfield master equation. A number of approaches exist to recover well-defined evolutions under additional Markovian assumptions, but much less is known beyond this regime. Here, we propose a numerical method to cure the complete-positivity violation issue while preserving the non-Markovian features of an arbitrary original dynamical map. The idea is to replace its unphysical Choi operator with its closest physical one, mimicking recent work on quantum process tomography. We also show that the regularized dynamics is more accurate in terms of reproducing the exact dynamics, which allows us to heuristically push the utilization of these master equations in moderate coupling regimes, where the loss of positivity can have a relevant impact. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Master equations play a pivotal role in investigating open quantum systems. In particular, the Bloch-Redfield equation stands out due to its relation to a concrete physical environment. However, without further approximations it does not lead to a Lindblad master equation that guarantees that the density matrix stays completely positive, which has raised some concerns regarding its use. This study builds on previous efforts to transform the Bloch-Redfield framework into a mathematically robust Lindblad equation while fully preserving the effects that are lost within the secular approximation that is commonly used to guarantee positivity. These previous approaches introduced two potential deficiencies: The environment-induced energy shift can be non-Hermitian and some decay rates can be negative, violating the assumptions of Lindblad's theorem. Here we propose and evaluate straightforward solutions to both problems. Our approach offers an effective and general procedure for obtaining a Lindblad equation, derived from a concrete physical environment, while mitigating the unphysical dynamics present in the Bloch-Redfield equation.
Abstract Completely positive transformations play an important role in the description of state changes in quantum mechanics, including the time evolution of open quantum systems. One useful tool to describe them is the so-called Choi isomorphism, which maps completely positive transformations to positive semi-definite matrices. Accordingly, there are numerous proposals to generalize the Choi isomorphism. In the present paper, we show that the 1976 paper of Gorini, Kossakowski, and Sudarshan (GKS) already holds the key for a further generalization and study the resulting GKS isomorphism. As an application, we compute the GKS matrix of the time evolution of a general open quantum system up to second order in time.
The reduced dynamics of an open quantum system obtained from an underlying microscopic Hamiltonian can in general only approximately be described by a time-local master equation. The quality of that approximation depends primarily on the coupling strength and the structure of the environment. Various such master equations have been proposed with different aims. Choosing the most suitable one for a specific system is not straightforward. By focusing on the accuracy of the reduced dynamics we provide a thorough assessment for a selection of methods (Redfield equation, quantum optical master equation, coarse-grained master equation, a related dynamical map approach, and a partial-secular approximation). We consider secondary, here, whether or not an approach guarantees positivity. We use two qubits coupled to a Lorentzian environment in a spin-boson-like fashion modeling a generic situation with various system and bath time scales. We see that, independent of the initial state, the simple Redfield equation with time-dependent coefficients is significantly more accurate than all other methods under consideration. We emphasize that positivity violation in the Redfield equation formalism becomes relevant only in a regime where any of the perturbative master equations considered here are rendered invalid anyway. This implies that the loss of positivity should in fact be welcomed as an important feature: it indicates the breakdown of the weak-coupling assumption. In addition we present the various approaches in a self-contained way and use the behavior of their errors to provide further insight into the range of validity of each method.
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.
Here we present a Lindblad master equation that approximates the Redfield equation, a well known master equation derived from first principles, without significantly compromising the range of applicability of the Redfield equation. Instead of full-scale coarse-graining, this approximation only truncates terms in the Redfield equation that average out over a time-scale typical of the quantum system. The first step in this approximation is to properly renormalize the system Hamiltonian, to symmetrize the gains and losses of the state due to the environmental coupling. In the second step, we swap out an arithmetic mean of the spectral density with a geometric one, in these gains and losses, thereby restoring complete positivity. This completely positive approximation, GAME (geometric-arithmetic master equation), is adaptable between its time-independent, time-dependent, and Floquet form. In the exactly solvable, three-level, Jaynes-Cummings model, we find that the error of the approximate state is almost an order of magnitude lower than that obtained by solving the coarse-grained stochastic master equation. As a test-bed, we use a ferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-chain with long-range dipole-dipole coupling between up to 25-spins, and study the differences between various master equations. We find that GAME has the highest accuracy per computational resource.