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arXiv:2606.30751

Schrödinger and Heisenberg non-Markovianity in quantum information tasks

Federico Settimo, Kimmo Luoma, Jyrki Piilo, Bassano Vacchini, Dariusz Chruściński, Andrea Smirne

quant-phSubmitted Jun 29, 2026• Announced Jul 1, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · Jun 29, 2026v2 · Oct 7, 2026
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Abstract

Quantum non-Markovianity has been widely studied and connected to the existence of memory effects in the dynamics of open systems. Surprisingly, working in the Schrödinger or in the Heisenberg picture can provide inequivalent description non-Markovianity: a process can appear to be memoryless in one picture, while displaying memory effects in the other. Here, we investigate which kind of memory is relevant for different quantum information tasks. Some of them, such as sending information via a noisy channel, require memory in both pictures in order to exhibit revivals in the task performance. For others, only one type of memory is sufficient. We also provide necessary conditions for non-Markovianity in both pictures by only considering the dynamics in one picture, showing for instance that the previously considered witness of Schrödinger non-Markovianity in terms of the volume of accessible states does indeed witness non-Markovianity in both pictures at the same time.

Comments
8 pages. Companion paper: "Revivals of Bell nonlocality require Schrödinger and Heisenberg non-Markovianity"

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Quantum non-Markovianity has been widely studied and connected to the existence of memory effects in the dynamics of open systems. Surprisingly, working in the Schrödinger or in the Heisenberg picture can provide inequivalent description non-Markovianity: a process can appear to be memoryless in one picture, while displaying memory effects in the other. Here, we investigate which kind of memory is relevant for different quantum information tasks. Some of them, such as sending information via a noisy channel, require memory in both pictures in order to exhibit revivals in the task performance. For others, only one type of memory is sufficient. We also provide necessary conditions for non-Markovianity in both pictures by only considering the dynamics in one picture, showing for instance that the previously considered witness of Schrödinger non-Markovianity in terms of the volume of accessible states does indeed witness non-Markovianity in both pictures at the same time.
Bell nonlocality is a key resource in quantum information, demonstrating the nonclassicality of quantum theory. Noise, however, is in general detrimental to nonlocality, and can cause the loss of the ability to violate any Bell inequality. Memory effects, on the other hand, can restore this quantumness and, as recently shown, they can be differently characterized in the Schrödinger and in the Heisenberg picture. Here, we show that if memory effects allow for revivals in time of nonlocality, then the dynamics must be non-Markovian in both pictures. We showcase our findings through a device-independent quantum key distribution task, for which Bell nonlocality is necessary.
A profound understanding of decoherence and dissipation in quantum dynamics is crucial for the realistic modeling of the evolution of quantum systems. In open quantum dynamics one distinguishes between a memoryless, so-called Markovian evolution and dynamics incorporating memory effects, termed non-Markovian. In this work we study how prevalent memory effects are in the set of all such dynamics. We thus investigate how often a Markovian description is applicable. This question is approached by investigating randomly generated two-step qubit dynamics with respect to different concepts and witnesses of non-Markovianity. We observe that almost all dynamics are non-Markovian, and only a small (yet finite) fraction is Markovian. Furthermore, we study how this proportion changes when considering certain subclasses such as lower rank or mixed-unitary dynamics. Importantly, our results shed light on the relative ratios of -- and interrelations between -- the sets of dynamics that are non-Markovian with respect to different criteria. Finally, we investigate the fraction of dynamics in which the memory effects are necessarily of quantum nature and establish a connection between two recently developed concepts that characterize the quantumness of memory in non-Markovian dynamics.
Although a number of measures for quantum non-Markovianity have been proposed recently, it is still an open question whether these measures directly characterize the memory effect of the environment, i.e., the dependence of a quantum state on its past in a time evolution. In this paper, we present a criterion and propose a measure for non-Markovianity with clear physical interpretations of the memory effect. The non-Markovianity is defined by the inequality $T({t}_{2},{t}_{0})\ensuremath{\ne}T({t}_{2},{t}_{1})T({t}_{1},{t}_{0})$ in terms of memoryless dynamical map TTT introduced in this paper. This definition is conceptually distinct from that based on divisibility used by Rivas et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 050403 (2010)], whose violation is manifested by noncomplete positivity of the dynamical map. We demonstrate via a typical quantum process that without Markovian approximation, nonzero memory effects (non-Markovianity) always exist even if the non-Markovianity is zero by the other non-Markovianity measures.
Divisibility of dynamical maps is a central notion in the study of quantum non-Markovianity, providing a natural framework to characterize memory effects via time-local master equations. In this work, we generalize the notion of divisibility of quantum dynamical maps from the Schrödinger to the Heisenberg picture. While the two pictures are equivalent at the level of physical predictions, we show that the divisibility properties of the corresponding dual maps are, in general, not equivalent. This inequivalence originates from the distinction between left and right generators of time-local master equations, which interchange roles under duality. We demonstrate that Schrödinger and Heisenberg divisibility are distinct concepts by constructing explicit dynamics divisible only in one picture. Furthermore, we introduce a quantifier for the violation of Heisenberg P-divisibility, analogous to the trace-distance-based measure of non-Markovianity, and provide it with an operational interpretation in terms of the guessing probability between effects. Our results show that Heisenberg divisibility is an independent witness of memory effects and highlight the need to consider both pictures when characterizing non-Markovian quantum dynamics.
In the current era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices, research on the theory of open system dynamics has a crucial role to play. In particular, understanding and quantifying memory effects in quantum systems is critical to gain a better handle on the effects of noise in quantum devices. The main focus of this review is to address the fundamental question of defining and characterizing such memory effects—broadly referred to as quantum non-Markovianity—utilizing various approaches. We first discuss the two-time-parameter maps approach to open system dynamics and review the various notions of quantum non-Markovianity that arise in this paradigm. We then discuss an alternate approach to quantum stochastic processes based on the quantum combs framework, which accounts for multi-time correlations. We discuss the interconnections and differences between these two paradigms and conclude with a discussion on the necessary and sufficient conditions for quantum non-Markovianity.
The reduced description of the quantum dynamic processes in the condensed phase environment leads to the equation of motion with a memory kernel. Such a memory effect, termed non-Markovianity, presents more complex dynamics compared to its memoryless or Markovian counterpart, and many chemical systems have been demonstrated through numerical simulations to exhibit non-Markovian quantum dynamics. Explicitly how the memory impacts the dynamic process remains largely unexplored. In this work, we focus on ways to separate the non-Markovian contributions from the dynamics and study the non-Markovian effects. Specifically, we developed a rigorous procedure for mapping the exact non-Markovian quantum propagator to the Lindblad form. Consequently, it allows us to extract the negative decay rate from the Lindbladian that is the signature of the non-Markovianity. By including or excluding the negative rate in the time evolution, we can decisively pinpoint the influence of non-Markovianity on the system's properties such as coherence, entanglement, and equilibrium state distribution. The understanding of such memory effects on the dynamic process suggests the possibility of leveraging non-Markovianity for quantum control.