Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2312.02670 · Physical Review A

Qubit-environment entanglement in time-dependent pure dephasing

Małgorzata Strzałka, Radim Filip, Katarzyna Roszak

Published Mar 12, 2024• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We show that the methods for quantification of system-environment entanglement that were recently developed for interactions that lead to pure decoherence of the system can be straightforwardly generalized to time-dependent Hamiltonians of the same type. This includes the if-and-only-if criteria of separability, as well as the entanglement measure applicable to qubit systems, and methods of detection of entanglement by operations and measurements performed solely on the system without accessing the environment. We use these methods to study the nature of the decoherence of a qubit-oscillator system. Qubit-oscillator entanglement is essential for developing bosonic quantum technology with quantum non-Gaussian states and its applications in quantum sensing and computing. The dominating bosonic platforms---trapped ions, electromechanics, and superconducting circuits---are based on the time-dependent gates that use such entanglement to achieve new quantum sensors and quantum error correction. The steplike time dependence of the Hamiltonian that is taken into account allows us to capture the complex interplay between the buildups of classical and quantum correlations, which could not be replicated in time-independent scenarios.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.109.032412

Related papers

Decoherence and the nature of system-environment correlations

A. Pernice, Walter T. Strunz

We investigate system-environment correlations based on the exact dynamics of a qubit and its environment in the framework of pure decoherence (phase damping). We focus on the relation of decoherence and the buildup of system-reservoir entanglement for an arbitrary (possibly mixed) initial qubit state. In the commonly employed regime where the qubit dynamics can be described by a Markov master equation of the Lindblad type, we find that for almost all qubit initial states inside the Bloch sphere, decoherence is complete while the total state is still separable---no entanglement is involved. In general, both ``separable'' and ``entangling'' decoherence occurs, depending on the temperature and initial qubit state. Moreover, we find situations where classical and quantum correlations periodically alternate as a function of time in the regime of low temperatures.

arXiv:1109.0147•Physical Review A•Dec 27, 2011•49 citations

Detection of entanglement during pure dephasing evolutions for systems and environments of any size

Małgorzata Strzałka, Katarzyna Roszak

We generalize the scheme for detection of qubit-environment entanglement to qudit-environment systems. This is of relevance for many-qubit systems and the quantification of the operation of quantum algorithms under the influence of external noise, since only decoherence that is not entangling in its nature can be effectively described by quantum channels and similar methods in more complicated scenarios. The generalization involves an increase in the class of entangled states which are not detected by the scheme, but the type of entanglement which cannot be detected is also least likely to qualitatively influence decoherence. We exemplify the operation of the scheme on a realistically modeled nitrogen-vacancy-center spin qutrit interacting with an environment of nuclear spins.

arXiv:2105.06837•Physical Review A•Oct 11, 2021•9 citations

A scheme for direct detection of qubit–environment entanglement generated during qubit pure dephasing

Bartosz Rzepkowski, Katarzyna Roszak

Abstract We propose a scheme for the detection of qubit–environment entanglement which requires only operations and measurements on the qubit, all within reach of current experimental state-of-the-art. The scheme works for any type of interaction which leads to pure dephasing of the qubit as long as the initial qubit state is pure. The scheme is direct in the sense that it allows the detection of entanglement present in the system at time $$\tau $$ τ after the initialization of the qubit in a superposition state. It requires a measurement on the qubit at time $$\tau $$ τ and a comparison of the post-measurement evolution to the evolution obtained by a modified scheme. It becomes particularly simple when one of the qubit states is neutral with respect to the environment, such as in case of the most common choice of the NV center spin qubit or for excitonic charge qubits, when the environment is initially at thermal equilibrium. In this case, the post-measurement evolution needs to be compared only to the standard decoherence which is obtained without any qubit manipulation after the preparation of the initial state.

arXiv:2002.10901•Quantum Information Processing•Dec 18, 2020•143 citations

Qubit-environment entanglement in pure dephasing dynamics for mixed initial states

Małgorzata Strzałka, Nico Peters, Laura Ares +2 more

Decoherence of qubits is one main limitation in quantum information processing, where the qubits themselves can be mixed because of decoherence and additional decoherence may generated through interactions with a bath. Here, we present a complete study of qubit-environment entanglement in the case of interactions that lead to pure dephasing of the qubit by allowing the initial state of the qubit to be mixed, exceeding previous restrictions. We find that the criteria for separability that hold for pure initial states of the qubit are reduced to witness status. Yet, the evolution of the witnesses reflects the array of features that entanglement can exhibit in the mixed case but are forbidden in the pure-qubit case. Most notably, this includes sudden birth of entanglement as the initial phase of the evolution is typically separable. Moreover, there is a stark numerical advantage to the study of entanglement for large environments when using the witness rather than the traditional measures available. We include the study of entanglement generated between a spin qubit and a sparse spin environment to illustrate the peculiarities of the evolution of entanglement in this case, as well as to emphasize the level of reliability of the entanglement witness.

quant-pharXiv:2610.36936•Oct 28, 2026•0 citations

How to detect qubit-environment entanglement generated during qubit dephasing

Katarzyna Roszak, Damian Kwiatkowski, Łukasz Cywiński

We propose a straightforward experimental protocol to test whether qubit-environment entanglement is generated during pure dephasing of a qubit. The protocol is implemented using only measurements and operations on the qubit---it does not involve the measurement of the system-environment state of interest, but the preparation and measurement of the qubit in two simple variations. A difference in the time dependencies of qubit coherence between the two cases testifies to the presence of entanglement in the state of interest. Furthermore, it signifies that the environment-induced noise experienced by the qubit cannot be modeled as a classical stochastic process independent of the qubit state. We demonstrate the operation of this protocol on a realistically modeled nitrogen-vacancy center spin qubit in diamond interacting with a nuclear spin environment, and show that the generation of entanglement should be easily observable in this case.

arXiv:1810.09217•Physical Review A•Aug 16, 2019•26 citations

Quantifying the nonclassicality of pure dephasing

Hong-Bin Chen, Ping‐Yuan Lo, Clemens Gneiting +3 more

One of the central problems in quantum theory is to characterize, detect, and quantify quantumness in terms of classical strategies. Dephasing processes, caused by non-dissipative information exchange between quantum systems and environments, provides a natural platform for this purpose, as they control the quantum-to-classical transition. Recently, it has been shown that dephasing dynamics itself can exhibit (non)classical traits, depending on the nature of the system-environment correlations and the related (im)possibility to simulate these dynamics with Hamiltonian ensembles-the classical strategy. Here we establish the framework of detecting and quantifying the nonclassicality for pure dephasing dynamics. The uniqueness of the canonical representation of Hamiltonian ensembles is shown, and a constructive method to determine the latter is presented. We illustrate our method for qubit, qutrit, and qubit-pair pure dephasing and describe how to implement our approach with quantum process tomography experiments. Our work is readily applicable to present-day quantum experiments.

arXiv:1811.09053•Nature Communications•Aug 22, 2019•41 citations
We show that the methods for quantification of system-environment entanglement that were recently developed for interactions that lead to pure decoherence of the system can be straightforwardly generalized to time-dependent Hamiltonians of the same type. This includes the if-and-only-if criteria of separability, as well as the entanglement measure applicable to qubit systems, and methods of detection of entanglement by operations and measurements performed solely on the system without accessing the environment. We use these methods to study the nature of the decoherence of a qubit-oscillator system. Qubit-oscillator entanglement is essential for developing bosonic quantum technology with quantum non-Gaussian states and its applications in quantum sensing and computing. The dominating bosonic platforms---trapped ions, electromechanics, and superconducting circuits---are based on the time-dependent gates that use such entanglement to achieve new quantum sensors and quantum error correction. The steplike time dependence of the Hamiltonian that is taken into account allows us to capture the complex interplay between the buildups of classical and quantum correlations, which could not be replicated in time-independent scenarios.
We investigate system-environment correlations based on the exact dynamics of a qubit and its environment in the framework of pure decoherence (phase damping). We focus on the relation of decoherence and the buildup of system-reservoir entanglement for an arbitrary (possibly mixed) initial qubit state. In the commonly employed regime where the qubit dynamics can be described by a Markov master equation of the Lindblad type, we find that for almost all qubit initial states inside the Bloch sphere, decoherence is complete while the total state is still separable---no entanglement is involved. In general, both ``separable'' and ``entangling'' decoherence occurs, depending on the temperature and initial qubit state. Moreover, we find situations where classical and quantum correlations periodically alternate as a function of time in the regime of low temperatures.
We generalize the scheme for detection of qubit-environment entanglement to qudit-environment systems. This is of relevance for many-qubit systems and the quantification of the operation of quantum algorithms under the influence of external noise, since only decoherence that is not entangling in its nature can be effectively described by quantum channels and similar methods in more complicated scenarios. The generalization involves an increase in the class of entangled states which are not detected by the scheme, but the type of entanglement which cannot be detected is also least likely to qualitatively influence decoherence. We exemplify the operation of the scheme on a realistically modeled nitrogen-vacancy-center spin qutrit interacting with an environment of nuclear spins.
Abstract We propose a scheme for the detection of qubit–environment entanglement which requires only operations and measurements on the qubit, all within reach of current experimental state-of-the-art. The scheme works for any type of interaction which leads to pure dephasing of the qubit as long as the initial qubit state is pure. The scheme is direct in the sense that it allows the detection of entanglement present in the system at time τ\tau τ τ after the initialization of the qubit in a superposition state. It requires a measurement on the qubit at time τ\tau τ τ and a comparison of the post-measurement evolution to the evolution obtained by a modified scheme. It becomes particularly simple when one of the qubit states is neutral with respect to the environment, such as in case of the most common choice of the NV center spin qubit or for excitonic charge qubits, when the environment is initially at thermal equilibrium. In this case, the post-measurement evolution needs to be compared only to the standard decoherence which is obtained without any qubit manipulation after the preparation of the initial state.
Decoherence of qubits is one main limitation in quantum information processing, where the qubits themselves can be mixed because of decoherence and additional decoherence may generated through interactions with a bath. Here, we present a complete study of qubit-environment entanglement in the case of interactions that lead to pure dephasing of the qubit by allowing the initial state of the qubit to be mixed, exceeding previous restrictions. We find that the criteria for separability that hold for pure initial states of the qubit are reduced to witness status. Yet, the evolution of the witnesses reflects the array of features that entanglement can exhibit in the mixed case but are forbidden in the pure-qubit case. Most notably, this includes sudden birth of entanglement as the initial phase of the evolution is typically separable. Moreover, there is a stark numerical advantage to the study of entanglement for large environments when using the witness rather than the traditional measures available. We include the study of entanglement generated between a spin qubit and a sparse spin environment to illustrate the peculiarities of the evolution of entanglement in this case, as well as to emphasize the level of reliability of the entanglement witness.
We propose a straightforward experimental protocol to test whether qubit-environment entanglement is generated during pure dephasing of a qubit. The protocol is implemented using only measurements and operations on the qubit---it does not involve the measurement of the system-environment state of interest, but the preparation and measurement of the qubit in two simple variations. A difference in the time dependencies of qubit coherence between the two cases testifies to the presence of entanglement in the state of interest. Furthermore, it signifies that the environment-induced noise experienced by the qubit cannot be modeled as a classical stochastic process independent of the qubit state. We demonstrate the operation of this protocol on a realistically modeled nitrogen-vacancy center spin qubit in diamond interacting with a nuclear spin environment, and show that the generation of entanglement should be easily observable in this case.
One of the central problems in quantum theory is to characterize, detect, and quantify quantumness in terms of classical strategies. Dephasing processes, caused by non-dissipative information exchange between quantum systems and environments, provides a natural platform for this purpose, as they control the quantum-to-classical transition. Recently, it has been shown that dephasing dynamics itself can exhibit (non)classical traits, depending on the nature of the system-environment correlations and the related (im)possibility to simulate these dynamics with Hamiltonian ensembles-the classical strategy. Here we establish the framework of detecting and quantifying the nonclassicality for pure dephasing dynamics. The uniqueness of the canonical representation of Hamiltonian ensembles is shown, and a constructive method to determine the latter is presented. We illustrate our method for qubit, qutrit, and qubit-pair pure dephasing and describe how to implement our approach with quantum process tomography experiments. Our work is readily applicable to present-day quantum experiments.