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arXiv:2506.01882 · Quantum

Learning thermodynamic master equations for open quantum systems

Peter Sentz, Stanley Nicholson, Yujin Cho, Sohail R. Reddy, Brendan Keith, Stefanie Günther

Published Jul 1, 2026• 1 citation
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Abstract

The characterization of Hamiltonians and other components of open quantum dynamical systems plays a crucial role in quantum computing and other applications. Scientific machine learning techniques have been applied to this problem in a variety of ways, including by modeling with deep neural networks. However, the majority of mathematical models describing open quantum systems are linear, and the natural nonlinearities in learnable models have not been incorporated using physical principles. We present a data-driven model for open quantum systems that includes learnable, thermodynamically consistent terms. The trained model is interpretable, as it directly estimates the system Hamiltonian and linear components of coupling to the environment. We validate the model on synthetic two and three-level data, as well as experimental two-level data collected from a quantum device at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

DOI
10.22331/q-2026-07-01-2151

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The characterization of Hamiltonians and other components of open quantum dynamical systems plays a crucial role in quantum computing and other applications. Scientific machine learning techniques have been applied to this problem in a variety of ways, including by modeling with deep neural networks. However, the majority of mathematical models describing open quantum systems are linear, and the natural nonlinearities in learnable models have not been incorporated using physical principles. We present a data-driven model for open quantum systems that includes learnable, thermodynamically consistent terms. The trained model is interpretable, as it directly estimates the system Hamiltonian and linear components of coupling to the environment. We validate the model on synthetic two and three-level data, as well as experimental two-level data collected from a quantum device at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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Abstract Despite the complexity of quantum systems in the real world, models with just a few effective many-body states often suffice to describe their quantum dynamics, provided decoherence is accounted for. We show that a machine learning algorithm is able to construct such models, given a straightforward set of quantum dynamics measurements. The effective Hilbert space can be a black box, with variations of the coupling to just one accessible output state being sufficient to generate the required training data. We demonstrate through simulations of a Markovian open quantum system that a neural network can automatically detect the number N of effective states and the most relevant Hamiltonian terms and state-dephasing processes and rates. For systems with N ⩽ 5 we find typical mean relative errors of predictions in the 10 % range. With more advanced networks and larger training sets, it is conceivable that a future single software can provide the automated first stop solution to model building for an unknown device or system, complementing and validating the conventional approach based on physical insight into the system.
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A precise understanding of the influence of a quantum system's environment on its dynamics, which is at the heart of the theory of open quantum systems, is crucial for further progress in the development of controllable large-scale quantum systems. However, existing approaches to account for complex system-environment interaction in the presence of memory effects are either based on heuristic and oversimplified principles or give rise to computational difficulties. In practice, one can leverage on available experimental data and replace first-principles simulations with a data-driven analysis that is often much simpler. Inspired by recent advances in data analysis and machine learning, we propose a data-driven approach to the analysis of the non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems. Our method allows, on the one hand, capturing the most important characteristics of open quantum systems such as the effective dimension of the environment and the spectrum of the joint system-environment quantum dynamics, and, on the other hand, reconstructing a predictive model of non-Markovian quantum dynamics, and denoising the measured quantum trajectories. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach with various models of open quantum systems, including a qubit coupled with a finite environment, a spin-boson model, and the damped Jaynes-Cummings model.