Trajectories of Critical Unstable Qubits in and on the Bloch Sphere
Snehit Panghal, Apostolos Pilaftsis
We extend previous studies on a novel class of unstable two-level systems which were called Critical Unstable Qubits (CUQs). In an appropriately defined co-decaying frame, the CUQs exhibit striking phenomena of indefinite anharmonic oscillations between two states and coherence-decoherence oscillations of mixed states. These features are distinct from the usual Rabi oscillations observed in the Hermitian counterpart of two-level systems, which are harmonic and preserve the coherence of the quantum state. We employ the density matrix formalism to study these phenomena for mixed states and delve into the nature of the trajectory traversed by these states in the Bloch sphere by studying the time evolution of the Bloch vector that describes the quantum state of the unstable qubit. In particular, we provide for the first time explicit geometric constructions to obtain trajectories of both pure and mixed CUQs in and on the Bloch sphere. This enables us to identify the stationary points of CUQs, at which the states do not evolve in time in the co-decaying frame. The potential implications of our findings for particle cosmology and quantum simulations of non-Hermitian Hamiltonians are discussed.
quant-pharXiv:2606.01405•Jun 2, 2026•0 citations