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arXiv:2509.23083

An Interacting System and Environment with Prior Correlations Plus Local Operations Can Mimic Uncorrelated Evolution

Daniel Dilley, Alvin Gonzales, Jeffrey M. Larson, Mark Byrd

Published Sep 27, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Initial system-environment correlations can induce reduced dynamics that depart from the standard completely positive (CP) description. We study when such dynamics can be reproduced by the same global unitary acting on an initial system-environment product state. We show that local preprocessing on the system, applied prior to the joint evolution, can lead to dynamics which are completely positive. We focus on two-qubit system-environment states, with a three-qubit extension when a single ancilla is used to implement Kraus channel preprocessing. We analyze three classes of local operations$-$measurements, unitaries, and Kraus channels$-$and characterize their ability to satisfy dynamics matching while minimally perturbing the initial system state. Local measurements can always enforce dynamics matching but necessarily reduce state fidelity. We numerically investigated local unitary preprocessing. Local unitaries enforce dynamics matching in all tested instances and typically preserve the system state: in 402 numerical cases the average fidelity is 99.8%, more than 92% of cases exceed 99% fidelity, and the minimum fidelity is 94.2%. We show that a two-term Kraus channel, realizable with a single ancillary qubit coupled to the system, achieves dynamics matching with unit fidelity in all tested cases. As a second contribution, we demonstrate that local preprocessing can prevent the emergence of non--completely positive (NCP) reduced dynamics in a time-dependent setting. For a correlated two-qubit experiment with a time-dependent global unitary U(t), the induced compatibility domain is fixed by the initial correlations. For every t in a nontrivial continuous interval, the reduced dynamics are NCP when defined over this domain. We then show that a single, time-independent local unitary applied prior to the joint evolution renders the reduced dynamics CP over the entire interval.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2509.23083

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Initial system-environment correlations can induce reduced dynamics that depart from the standard completely positive (CP) description. We study when such dynamics can be reproduced by the same global unitary acting on an initial system-environment product state. We show that local preprocessing on the system, applied prior to the joint evolution, can lead to dynamics which are completely positive. We focus on two-qubit system-environment states, with a three-qubit extension when a single ancilla is used to implement Kraus channel preprocessing. We analyze three classes of local operations−-−measurements, unitaries, and Kraus channels−-−and characterize their ability to satisfy dynamics matching while minimally perturbing the initial system state. Local measurements can always enforce dynamics matching but necessarily reduce state fidelity. We numerically investigated local unitary preprocessing. Local unitaries enforce dynamics matching in all tested instances and typically preserve the system state: in 402 numerical cases the average fidelity is 99.8%, more than 92% of cases exceed 99% fidelity, and the minimum fidelity is 94.2%. We show that a two-term Kraus channel, realizable with a single ancillary qubit coupled to the system, achieves dynamics matching with unit fidelity in all tested cases. As a second contribution, we demonstrate that local preprocessing can prevent the emergence of non--completely positive (NCP) reduced dynamics in a time-dependent setting. For a correlated two-qubit experiment with a time-dependent global unitary U(t), the induced compatibility domain is fixed by the initial correlations. For every t in a nontrivial continuous interval, the reduced dynamics are NCP when defined over this domain. We then show that a single, time-independent local unitary applied prior to the joint evolution renders the reduced dynamics CP over the entire interval.
Dynamical AAA and BBB maps have been employed extensively by Sudarshan and co-workers to investigate open-system evolution of quantum systems. A canonical structure of the AAA map is introduced here. It is shown that this canonical AAA map enables us to investigate whether the dynamics is completely positive (CP) or not completely positive (NCP) in an elegant way and, hence, it subsumes the basic results on open-system dynamics. Identifying memory effects in open-system evolution is gaining increasing importance recently and, here, a criterion of non-Markovianity, based on the relative entropy of the dynamical state is proposed. The relative entropy difference of the dynamical system serves as a complementary characterization---though not related directly---to the fidelity difference criterion proposed recently. Three typical examples of open-system evolution of a qubit, prepared initially in a correlated state with another qubit (environment), and evolving jointly under a specific unitary dynamics---which corresponds to a NCP dynamical map---are investigated by employing both the relative entropy difference and fidelity difference tests of non-Markovianity. The two-qubit initial states are chosen to be (i) a pure entangled state, (ii) the Werner state, which exemplifies both entangled and separable states of qubits, depending on a real parameter, and (iii) a separable mixed state. Both the relative entropy and fidelity criteria offer a nice display of how non-Markovianity manifests itself in all three examples.
It is now increasingly realized in the study of open system dynamics that initial correlations do not pose a conceptual difficulty as traditionally believed. A similar methodology as used to describe initial product states can be adopted, with the only difference being that the reduced dynamics is possibly not completely positive, entailing that only a restricted set of initial reduced states lead to a physically valid dynamics. Here we study the interplay between the initial correlations, especially in the form of highly entangled states, and the system–environment unitary. In particular, for almost any initial entangled state, one can furnish infinitely many joint unitaries that generate CP dynamics on the system. Restricting to the case of initial, pure entangled states, we obtain the scaling of the dimension of the set of these unitaries and show that it is of zero measure in the set of all possible interaction unitaries.
Given an open quantum system SSS with environment EEE, we establish a one-to-one correspondence between completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) maps from SSS to EEE and assignment maps initializing the composite system SESESE in a possibly correlated state prior to unitary evolution. We show that every possible joint state ρSEρ_{SE}ρSE​ can be realized by such assignment maps, which are inherently Hermiticity-preserving and trace-preserving (HPTP). While these maps sacrifice global positivity, we derive a simple necessary and sufficient condition for any local state of SSS to belong to their domain of validity. Furthermore, we prove that the geometry of this domain is governed by the joint state assigned to the maximally mixed input, ensuring that a non-zero volume of admissible local states can readily coexist with initial system-environment entanglement. Finally, we provide an operational protocol for witnessing such limits of validity.
In this paper we return to the problem of reduced-state dynamics in the presence of an interacting environment. The question we investigate is how to appropriately model a particular system evolution given some knowledge of the system-environment interaction. When the experimenter takes into account certain known features of the interaction such as its invariant subspaces or its non-local content, it may not be possible to consistently model the system evolution over a certain time interval using a standard Stinespring dilation, which assumes the system and environment to be initially uncorrelated. Simple examples demonstrating how restrictions can emerge are presented below. When the system and environment are qubits, we completely characterize the set of unitaries that always generate reduced dynamics capable of being modeled using a consistent Stinespring dilation. Finally, we show how any initial correlations between the system and environment can be certified by observing the system transformation alone during certain joint evolutions.
The problem of conditions on the initial correlations between the system and the environment that lead to completely positive (CP) or not-completely positive (NCP) maps has been studied by various authors. Two lines of study may be discerned: one concerned with families of initial correlations that induce CP dynamics under the application of an arbitrary joint unitary on the system and environment; the other concerned with specific initial states that may be highly entangled. Here we study the latter problem, and highlight the interplay between the initial correlations and the unitary applied. In particular, for almost any initial entangled state, one can furnish infinitely many joint unitaries that generate CP dynamics on the system. Restricting to the case of initial, pure entangled states, we obtain the scaling of the dimension of the set of these unitaries and show that it is of zero measure in the set of all possible interaction unitaries.
In the simplest approximation, the reduced dynamics of a quantum system SSS interacting with its environment EEE is considered to be given by a completely positive map. But, in general, this is not the case. In fact, the reduced dynamics of the system in not even linear, in general. Whether the reduced dynamics is linear or not is determined by two factors: the set of possible initial states of the system-environment $\mathcal{S}=\left\lbrace ρ_{SE} \right\rbrace $, and the joint system-environment unitary evolution UUU. When UUU is factorisable as U=US⊗UEU=U_S\otimes U_EU=US​⊗UE​, then we can choose S=D\mathcal{S}=\mathcal{D}S=D, where D\mathcal{D}D is the set of all system-environment density operators. In other words, when UUU is factorisable, the reduced dynamics of the system SSS is linear (in fact unitary) for arbitrary initial state of the system-environment ρSEρ_{SE}ρSE​. We show that this result cannot be generalized to any non-factorisable UUU: For any non-factorisable unitary evolution of the whole system-environment UUU, the set S\mathcal{S}S must be chosen as a proper subset of D\mathcal{D}D to achieve linear reduced dynamics. As a byproduct, considering a convex set of possible initial states of the system-environment S\mathcal{S}S such that TrE S=TrE D\mathrm{Tr}_{E} \ \mathcal{S}=\mathrm{Tr}_{E} \ \mathcal{D}TrE​ S=TrE​ D, we show that when the reduced dynamics of the system, for one system-environment unitary evolution U1U_1U1​, is positive, but not completely positive, this implies that reduced dynamics is not linear for another U2U_2U2​.