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Physical Review A

Markov states of the quantum electromagnetic field

Luigi Accardi, G. S. Watson

Published Feb 1, 1987• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A translation-invariant state (a quantum Markov chain) is associated with a nearest-neighbor interaction on a one-dimensional lattice by a new technique which provides closed forms for all the correlation functions. When applied to an Ising-type perturbation of a chain of harmonic oscillators, the dynamics can be computed explicitly. The resulting translation-invariant distribution is substantially different from the Planck distribution when the temperature and the coupling constant are large. For the evolution of the field operators on a given mode, we obtain a natural nonlinear generalization of the theorem which states that the free evolution of the field operators is obtained by second quantization of the classical free evolution.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.35.1275

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A translation-invariant state (a quantum Markov chain) is associated with a nearest-neighbor interaction on a one-dimensional lattice by a new technique which provides closed forms for all the correlation functions. When applied to an Ising-type perturbation of a chain of harmonic oscillators, the dynamics can be computed explicitly. The resulting translation-invariant distribution is substantially different from the Planck distribution when the temperature and the coupling constant are large. For the evolution of the field operators on a given mode, we obtain a natural nonlinear generalization of the theorem which states that the free evolution of the field operators is obtained by second quantization of the classical free evolution.
Open quantum systems have drawn attention over decades due to its applicability in the foundation of theoretical physics, e.g. statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics. The dynamics of open quantum systems has been described as separate entities from their surrounding environment that consists of a very large number of modes, somehow coupled to the mode of the system. Even though the exact solution of the dynamical behavior of the system is impossible to calculate, we obtain a tentative solution using the crucial Markov approximation. The input-output formalism of the quantum Langevin equation (QLE) has been considered as a useful tool which provides a semi-classical description of the dynamics of the system, whereas the master equation provides a complete picture of the dynamics of the system expressed in terms of density matrix. While studying the dynamics of nonlinear system/environment coupling using QLE, we see, for a small value of external field, that the steady state system field does not change much from the steady state field obtained in the absence of nonlinear dissipation. However, in a case where a stronger external field is applied, we see that the deviation becomes substantial from the solution of linear system. We also see that the nonlinear coupling introduces significant difference in the cavity fluctuation spectrum. The description, therefore, provides a potential explanation of parametric effects in terms of nonlinear dissipation phenomena associated with the nonlinear coupling. Even though the theories developed in the context of open quantum systems have proven to be powerful tools, they do not provide a satisfactory platform to be implemented on non-linear Hamiltonians. We often approximate it by linearizing over nonlinear steady state field amplitude, and therefore, the interesting effects are often overlooked. The limitation of the analytics provokes us to simulate open quantum dynamics numerically. The numerical method consists of transformation of the environmental degrees of freedom to a one-dimensional many-body chain, and the computational technique includes numerical diagonalization and renormalization process. The time-adaptive density matrix renormalisation group (t-DMRG) is known as one of the most powerful techniques for the simulation of strongly-correlated many-body quantum systems. In this thesis, along with the theoretical modeling, we implement DMRG numerical scheme for the simulation of canonical S/B model by mapping it to one-dimensional harmonic chain with nearest neighbor interactions, and use the method to investigate the dynamics of the free dissipative system. The thermalization of open quantum systems is also studied by generating minimally entangled typical thermal states (METTS) through imaginary time evolution, and real-time evolving an empty system in the presence of the thermal bath. Further, we simulate coherently driven free dissipative Kerr nonlinear system numerically using Euler's method by solving Heisenberg equation of motion and t-DMRG algorithm, and demonstrate how the numerical results are analogous to classical bistability. By comparing with analytics, we see that the DMRG numerics is analogous to the quantum-mechanical exact solution obtained by mapping the equation of motion of the density matrix of the system to a Fokker-Plank equation. The comparison between two different numerical techniques shows that the semi-classical Euler's method determines the dynamics of the system field of one among two coherent branches, whereas DMRG numerics gives the superposition of both of them. Hence, DMRG-determined time dynamics undergoes generating non-classical states. Our approach of dealing with nonlinearity represents an important contribution in the developments of technique to study the dynamical and steady-state behavior of open quantum systems, which is a fundamental aspect of quantum physics.
The evolution of a quantum system undergoing repeated indirect measurements naturally leads to a Markov chain on the set of states which is called a quantum trajectory. In this paper we consider a specific model of such a quantum trajectory associated to the one-atom maser model. It describes the evolution of one mode of the quantized electromagnetic field in a cavity interacting with two-level atoms. When the system is non-resonant we prove that this Markov chain admits a unique invariant probability measure. We moreover prove convergence in the Wasserstein metric towards this invariant measure. These results rely on a purification theorem: almost surely the state of the system approaches the set of pure states. Compared to similar results in the literature, the system considered here is infinite dimensional. While existence of an invariant measure is a consequence of the compactness of the set of states in finite dimension, in infinite dimension existence of an invariant measure is not free. Furthermore usual purification criterions in finite dimension have no straightforward equivalent in infinite dimension.
An extremely useful evolution equation that allows systematically calculating the two-time correlation functions (CF's) of system operators for non-Markovian open (dissipative) quantum systems is derived. The derivation is based on perturbative quantum master equation approach, so non-Markovian open quantum system models that are not exactly solvable can use our derived evolution equation to easily obtain their two-time CF's of system operators, valid to second order in the system-environment interaction. Since the form and nature of the Hamiltonian are not specified in our derived evolution equation, our evolution equation is applicable for bosonic and/or fermionic environments and can be applied to a wide range of system-environment models with any factorized (separable) system-environment initial states (pure or mixed). When applied to a general model of a system coupled to a finite-temperature bosonic environment with a system coupling operator L in the system-environment interaction Hamiltonian, the resultant evolution equation is valid for both L = L(†) and L ≠ L(†) cases, in contrast to those evolution equations valid only for L = L(†) case in the literature. The derived equation that generalizes the quantum regression theorem (QRT) to the non-Markovian case will have broad applications in many different branches of physics. We then give conditions on which the QRT holds in the weak system-environment coupling case and apply the derived evolution equation to a problem of a two-level system (atom) coupled to the finite-temperature bosonic environment (electromagnetic fields) with L ≠ L(†).
This paper is concerned with translation invariant networks of linear quantum stochastic systems with nearest neighbour interaction mediated by boson fields. The systems are associated with sites of a one-dimensional chain or a multidimensional lattice and are governed by coupled linear quantum stochastic differential equations (QSDEs). Such interconnections of open quantum systems are relevant, for example, to the phonon theory of crystalline solids, atom trapping in optical lattices and quantum metamaterials. In order to represent a large-scale open quantum harmonic oscillator, the coefficients of the coupled QSDEs must satisfy certain physical realizability conditions. These are established in the form of matrix algebraic equations for the parameters of an individual building block of the network and its interaction with the neighbours and external fields. We also discuss the computation of mean square performance functionals with block Toeplitz weighting matrices for such systems in the thermodynamic limit per site for unboundedly increasing fragments of the lattice.
The reduced density operator for a driven electromagnetic field mode relaxing to a bath of oscillators is formally found in closed form. In the limit of weak coupling, the density operator which maximizes the entropy subject to the constraints of a given average energy and average electric and magnetic field remains invariant under interaction with the bath. The quantum characteristic function is found in the weak-coupling case and agrees with previous results. The method may be generalized to many modes relaxing to a bath of oscillators.
In his paper (1986 Beables for quantum field theory Phys. Rep. 137 49–54) John S Bell proposed how to associate particle trajectories with a lattice quantum field theory, yielding what can be regarded as a |Ψ| 2 -distributed Markov process on the appropriate configuration space. A similar process can be defined in the continuum, for more or less any regularized quantum field theory; we call such processes Bell-type quantum field theories. We describe methods for explicitly constructing these processes. These concern, in addition to the definition of the Markov processes, the efficient calculation of jump rates, how to obtain the process from the processes corresponding to the free and interaction Hamiltonian alone, and how to obtain the free process from the free Hamiltonian or, alternatively, from the one-particle process by a construction analogous to ‘second quantization’. As an example, we consider the process for a second quantized Dirac field in an external electromagnetic field.