Non-unital noise is a fundamental feature of open quantum systems, governing energy exchange and inducing state translations on the Bloch sphere. While such translations can be useful for tasks such as state preparation and channel capacity, unital dynamics where no translation occurs are often preferred in quantum information processing, particularly for error correction. Phase-covariant dynamics provide a general framework encompassing dissipation, excitation, and dephasing processes in qubit systems; however, commonly used models such as the generalized amplitude damping (GAD) channel offer only limited control over these features. In this work, we present a constructive framework for generating a broader class of phase-covariant dynamics by mixing amplitude-damping and anti-damping channels with unequal decay parameters and time-dependent mixing probabilities. This approach enables independent control over contraction and translation, allows continuous tuning between non-unital and unital regimes, and yields an effective dephasing contribution absent in GAD. To characterize these dynamics, we employ the general theorem for P-divisibility and show that it can be used constructively by evaluating it in suitably chosen Hilbert space bases, leading to simplified conditions for both unital and non-unital cases. The framework captures a wide range of behaviors, including CP-divisible, P-divisible but not CP-divisible, and non-P-divisible dynamics. We further show that appropriate mixing can reduce the deviation from the ideal noiseless evolution and that such improvement persists even after tuning the dynamics to the unital regime. Our results provide a flexible approach to engineering open system dynamics beyond standard thermal models, with potential applications in noise control and quantum information processing.
Non-unital noise is a fundamental feature of open quantum systems, governing energy exchange and inducing state translations on the Bloch sphere. While such translations can be useful for tasks such as state preparation and channel capacity, unital dynamics where no translation occurs are often preferred in quantum information processing, particularly for error correction. Phase-covariant dynamics provide a general framework encompassing dissipation, excitation, and dephasing processes in qubit systems; however, commonly used models such as the generalized amplitude damping (GAD) channel offer only limited control over these features. In this work, we present a constructive framework for generating a broader class of phase-covariant dynamics by mixing amplitude-damping and anti-damping channels with unequal decay parameters and time-dependent mixing probabilities. This approach enables independent control over contraction and translation, allows continuous tuning between non-unital and unital regimes, and yields an effective dephasing contribution absent in GAD. To characterize these dynamics, we employ the general theorem for P-divisibility and show that it can be used constructively by evaluating it in suitably chosen Hilbert space bases, leading to simplified conditions for both unital and non-unital cases. The framework captures a wide range of behaviors, including CP-divisible, P-divisible but not CP-divisible, and non-P-divisible dynamics. We further show that appropriate mixing can reduce the deviation from the ideal noiseless evolution and that such improvement persists even after tuning the dynamics to the unital regime. Our results provide a flexible approach to engineering open system dynamics beyond standard thermal models, with potential applications in noise control and quantum information processing.
We systematically characterize quantum entanglement in all sixteen combinations of two-qubit Bell states across three operational regimes: pure superposition, noiseless mixing, and asymmetric mixing of one noisy and one pure Bell state. For pure superpositions, we calculate the von Neumann entropy and show that entanglement depends critically on the relative phase phi between superposed states. For mixed states, we use concurrence C under three physically motivated decoherence channels. The Depolarizing (DP) and Phase Damping (PD) channels are modeled as global, collective operations on the two-qubit Hilbert space, while Amplitude Damping (AD) is treated as independent local decay on each qubit, reflecting the asymmetric, energy-dissipating nature of spontaneous emission. A central and counterintuitive result is that increasing noise can raise concurrence in specific parameter regimes across all three channels. We further map the boundary between mathematical entanglement (C > 0) and operational quantum non-locality using the Horodecki criterion, finding this boundary to be strongly channel-dependent. Under Phase Damping, the Bell-local entanglement regime vanishes entirely for identical and same-bases mixtures, meaning any surviving entanglement guarantees a CHSH violation. Under Depolarizing noise, a large Bell-local region requires mixing probability r > 1/sqrt(2) to recover non-locality at maximum noise. For Amplitude Damping, certain mixtures exhibit a non-monotonic Horodecki parameter M(T): concurrence decreases monotonically with noise, yet the capacity for CHSH violation is lost at intermediate noise levels and restored at high noise, as maximal damping repurifies the noisy branch. These results provide a unified analytical reference for entanglement and non-locality management across Bell-state combinations and decoherence channels relevant to NISQ architectures.
Abstract We analyze convex combinations of non-unital qubit maps that are phase-covariant. In particular, we consider the behavior of maps that combine amplitude damping, inverse amplitude damping, and pure dephasing. We show that mixing non-unital channels can result in restoring the unitality, whereas mixing commutative maps can lead to non-commutativity. For the convex combinations of Markovian semigroups, we prove that classical uncertainties cannot break quantum Markovianity. Moreover, contrary to the Pauli channel case, the semigroup can be recovered only by mixing two other semigroups.
The generalized amplitude damping channel (GADC) is considered an important model for quantum communications, especially over optical networks. We make two salient contributions in this paper apropos of this channel. First, we consider a symmetric GAD channel characterized by the parameter n=1/2, and derive its exact classical capacity, by constructing a specific induced classical channel. We show that the Holevo quantity for the GAD channel equals the Shannon capacity of the induced binary symmetric channel, establishing at once the capacity result and that the GAD channel capacity can be achieved without the use of entanglement at the encoder or joint measurements at the decoder. Second, motivated by the inevitable buffering of qubits in quantum networks, we consider a generalized amplitude damping \emph{queue-channel} -- that is, a setting where qubits suffer a waiting time dependent GAD noise as they wait in a buffer to be transmitted. This GAD queue channel is characterized by non-i.i.d. noise due to correlated waiting times of consecutive qubits. We exploit a conditional independence property in conjunction with additivity of the channel model, to obtain a capacity expression for the GAD queue channel in terms of the stationary waiting time in the queue. Our results provide useful insights towards designing practical quantum communication networks, and highlight the need to explicitly model the impact of buffering.
Resource-theoretic measures of quantum channels are useful only ifthey remain mathematically controlled under physically realistic noise. Weinvestigate the behaviour of the operational admissibility distance undernon-unital completely positive trace-preserving maps. Using amplitudedamping as a canonical model of energy relaxation, we show that althoughnon-unital channels possess an affine component in their Bloch representation, this contribution cancels identically on trace-annihilating channeldifferences, leaving contraction governed solely by the linear action onthe traceless operator subspace. This yields an explicit contraction coefficient, a bipartite suppression factor, and an exponential persistence lawunder repeated local noise. These results extend the admissibility-distanceframework from idealized unital channels to dissipative noise models, establishing mathematically controlled resource contraction in physicallyrealistic settings and providing a rigorous foundation for analysing dynamical nonlocality under energy relaxation.
Abstract Non-Markovian dynamics is central to quantum information processing, as memory effects strongly influence coherence preservation, metrology, and communication. In this work, we investigate the role of stochastic system–bath couplings in shaping non-Markovian behavior of open quantum systems, using the central spin model within a time-convolutionless master equation framework. We show that the character of the reduced dynamics depends jointly on the intrinsic memory of the environment and on the structure of the system–environment interaction. In certain regimes, the dynamics simplify to pure dephasing, while in general both amplitude damping and dephasing contribute to the evolution. By employing two complementary measures: the Quantum Fisher Information (QFI) flow and the Breuer–Laine–Piilo (BLP) measure, we demonstrate that QFI flow may fail to witness memory effects in weak-coupling and near-resonant regimes, whereas the BLP measure still detects information backflow. Furthermore, external modulation of the interaction kernel produces qualitatively richer behavior, including irregular and frequency-dependent revivals of non-Markovianity. These results clarify the physical origin of memory effects, highlight the limitations of single-witness approaches, and suggest that stochasticity and modulation can be harnessed to engineer robust, noise-resilient quantum technologies.
It is known that non-unital noise such as the amplitude damping can sometimes increase quantum correlations, while unital noise such as the dephasing usually decreases quantum correlations. It is, therefore, important to delineate the conditions, when noise can enhance the quantumness of the system. Here, we show that if the noise acting on the system is unital (non-unital), then the noise acting on the environment must also be unital (non-unital), for the evolution to be unitary in the joint system-environment space. For example, if the first two qubits are treated as system and the third qubit is treated as environment, then both the system and the environment evolve unitally in case of a three-qubit GHZ state, and both of them evolve non-unitally in case of a three-qubit W state. Our result may be of interest in quantum information, and we anticipate it to be useful in various contexts, such as to better tackle noise in quantum computing and quantum information processing.