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arXiv:2508.08532 · Physical Review A

Simultaneous control of populations and coherence phase of open two-level quantum systems with a single pulse

Gustavo Fernandes da Costa, Emanuel F. de Lima

Published Nov 24, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

We address the control of the dynamics of both population and coherence phase in an open two-level quantum system employing a single external control field. The system dynamics is described by a Markovian master equation that takes into account dephasing and thermal noise. The control is engineered by inverting the underlying equations of motion, which yields an analytical expression for the control field in terms of user-specified time-dependent functions for the population and coherence phase. Our approach allows us to dictate not only the initial and final populations and phases, but the full dynamics of these quantities. The chosen functions for population and phase have to conform to certain constraints indicated in our analysis. Our methodology also reveals the possible transitions for given initial conditions and environmental noise parameters.

DOI
10.1103/x2g9-wpk6

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We apply reverse engineering to find electromagnetic pulses that allow for the control of populations in quantum systems under dephasing and thermal noises. In particular, we discuss two-level systems given their importance in the description of several molecular systems as well as quantum computing. Such an investigation naturally finds applications in a multitude of physical situations involving the control of quantum systems. We present an analytical description of the pulse which solves a constrained dynamics where the initial and final populations are fixed a priori. This constrained dynamics is sometimes impossible, and we precisely spot the conditions for that. One of our results is the presentation of analytical conditions for the establishment of steady states for finite coherence in the presence of noise. This might naturally find applications in quantum memories.
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Abstract We present an analytical electric field expression to simultaneously control the population and phase dynamics of two-level quantum systems. The presented electric field is obtained by a reverse engineering technique after the desired population and phase evolution pathways of the system have been specified. Upon application of this laser field, the system is driven from an arbitrary quantum state superposition to the desired population distribution; meanwhile the phase of one of the states proceeds according to a predefined path. The robustness of the engineered electric field is demonstrated by numerical simulations on the example of the 3s → 3p transition of atomic sodium. Furthermore, the limitations of the presented technique, which arise due to the application of the rotating wave approximation, are thoroughly analyzed and discussed.
We study the effect of Markovian environmental noise on the dynamics of a two-level quantum system which is steered adiabatically by an external driving field. We express the master equation taking consistently into account all the contributions to the lowest nonvanishing order in the coupling to the Markovian environment. We study the master equation numerically and analytically and we find that, in the adiabatic limit, a zero-temperature environment does not affect the ground-state evolution. As a physical application, we discuss extensively how the environment affects Cooper-pair pumping. The adiabatic ground-state pumping appears to be robust against environmental noise. In fact, the relaxation due to the environment is required to avoid the accumulation of small errors from each pumping cycle. We show that neglecting the nonsecular terms in the master equation leads to unphysical results, such as charge nonconservation. We discuss also a possible way to control the environmental noise in a realistic physical setup and its influence on the pumping process.