The transition time between states plays an important role in designing quantum devices as they are very sensitive to environmental influences. Decoherence phenomenon is responsible for possible destructions of the entanglement that is a fundamental requirement to implement quantum information processing systems. If the time between states is minimized, the decoherence effects can be reduced, thus, it is advantageous to the designer to develop expressions for time performance measures. Quantum speed limit (QSL) problem has been studied from the theoretical point of view, providing general results. Considering the implementation of quantum control systems, as the decoherence phenomenon is unavoidable, it is important to apply these general results to particular cases, developing expressions and performance measures, to assist control engineering designers. Here, a minimum time performance measure is defined for quantum control problems, for time-independent or time-dependent Hamiltonians, and applied to some practical examples, providing hints that may be useful for researchers pursuing optimization strategies for quantum control systems.
The transition time between states plays an important role in designing quantum devices as they are very sensitive to environmental influences. Decoherence phenomenon is responsible for possible destructions of the entanglement that is a fundamental requirement to implement quantum information processing systems. If the time between states is minimized, the decoherence effects can be reduced, thus, it is advantageous to the designer to develop expressions for time performance measures. Quantum speed limit (QSL) problem has been studied from the theoretical point of view, providing general results. Considering the implementation of quantum control systems, as the decoherence phenomenon is unavoidable, it is important to apply these general results to particular cases, developing expressions and performance measures, to assist control engineering designers. Here, a minimum time performance measure is defined for quantum control problems, for time-independent or time-dependent Hamiltonians, and applied to some practical examples, providing hints that may be useful for researchers pursuing optimization strategies for quantum control systems.
Quantum mechanics establishes a fundamental bound for the minimum evolution time between two states of a given system. Known as the quantum speed limit (QSL), it is a useful tool in the context of quantum control, where the speed of some control protocol is usually intended to be as large as possible. While QSL expressions for time-independent Hamiltonians have been well studied, the time-dependent regime has remained somewhat unexplored, albeit being usually the relevant problem to be compared with when studying systems controlled by external fields. In this paper we explore the relation between optimal times found in quantum control and the QSL bound, in the (relevant) time-dependent regime, by discussing the ubiquitous two-level Landau-Zener-type Hamiltonian.
The problem concerning the minimum time for an initial state to evolve up to a target state plays an important role in the Classic Optimal Control theory. In the quantum context, as quantum states are so sensitive to environmental influences, the problem is more complex, but its formulation and solution are decisive to implement quantum information processing systems. As is well known, the decoherence phenomenon is unavoidable and the time-energy uncertainty relation must be used to study quantum dynamics. Here, the time-energy uncertainty relations are revisited, being fundamental to propose performance measures based on minimum time evolution. A minimum time performance measure is definedfor quantum control problems. Then, some practical examples are considered and the minimum time performance measure is applied providing results that are supposed to be useful for researchers to pursue strategies to optimize the control of the states of a quantum system.
Quantum mechanics establishes a fundamental bound for the minimum evolution time between two states of a given system. Known as the quantum speed limit (QSL), it is a useful tool in the context of quantum control, where the speed of some control protocol is usually intended to be as large as possible. While QSL expressions for time-independent Hamiltonians have been well studied, the time-dependent regime has remained somewhat unexplored, albeit being usually the relevant problem to be compared with when studying systems controlled by external fields. In this paper we explore the relation between optimal times found in quantum control and the QSL bound, in the (relevant) time-dependent regime, by discussing the ubiquitous two-level Landau-Zener–type Hamiltonian.
Quantum state change cannot occur instantly, but the speed of quantum evolution is limited to an upper bound value, called quantum speed limit (QSL). Understanding the quantum speed limit time (QSLT) is fundamental to advancing the control and optimization of quantum systems under decoherence. While significant progress has been made for single-qubit systems, the dynamics of two-qubit systems remain less explored. Studying the effects of dynamical decoupling (DD), such as periodic dynamical decoupling (PDD), on QSLT in two-qubit systems provides an opportunity to explore how to approach coherence preservation, entanglement stabilization, and environmental noise suppression. This exploration can lead to optimized strategies for controlling the evolution of two-qubit systems, which serve as the foundation of quantum gates and scalable quantum architectures. By analyzing QSLT in two-qubit systems, this research seeks to find how DD techniques can be adapted to mitigate the adverse effects of decoherence and extend their coherence times. The insights from this work will also shed light on the role of non-Markovian effects in two-qubit systems, offering potential pathways for leveraging such phenomena to maintain quantum coherence. The results reveal that under special conditions when decoupling pulses are applied to both qubits, the PDD method can completely remove all undesirable effects of the pure dephasing process. Eventually, these findings try to bridge the gap between theoretical frameworks and practical applications in quantum technologies, aiming to develop high-performance quantum processors.
In this paper we propose to use a quantum speed limit (QSL) as a measure of robustness of states, defining a state with a bigger QSL as more robust. From this perspective, it is important to have an explicitly computable QSL, because then we can formulate an engineering problem of the Hamiltonian that makes a target state robust against decoherence. Hence we derive an explicitly computable QSL that is applicable to general Markovian open quantum systems. This QSL is tighter than another explicitly computable QSL, in an important setup such that decoherence is small. Also, the Hamiltonian engineering problem with this QSL is a quadratic convex optimization problem, and thus it is efficiently solvable. The idea of robust state characterization and the Hamiltonian engineering, in terms of the QSL, is demonstrated with several examples.
As one of the fundamental questions, quantum speed limit (QSL) is of vital role in the community of quantum physics, which sets the ultimate, maximal speed with which a quantum system can evolve. QSL originated from the understanding of the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. In 1945, Mandelstam and Tamm found the time Δt in the celebrated relation ΔEΔt≥ℏ could be thought as the minimum time that a quantum system needs to evolve from an initial state to the orthogonal state for unitary evolution. QSL sets the lower bound of the evolution. They established the relationship between the minimum evolution time ( τQSL ) and the energy uncertainty of the system (ΔE), namely τQSL=πℏ/(2ΔE) , the Mandelstam-Tamm (MT) bound. Later, Margolus and Levitin derived another different bound for a closed system which connected the τQSL with the average energy of the system ( 〈E〉 ), i.e., τQSL=πℏ/(2〈E〉) , the Margolus-Levitin (ML) bound. Combining the MT and ML bounds together, we can have a unified bound for a unitary system and orthogonal states. In the case of open system dynamics, because there is energy and/or coherence exchange between the system and the environment, the orthogonal final state of the initial state can hardly be reached any longer. An investigation of the QSL on non-unitary quantum evolution needs to be considered. The generalized QSLs are established by employing the distance between the distinguishable states. Different metrics define different distances, leading to different QSL bounds. We show a few typical generalized QSL bounds based on different metrics. And the unified QSL bound for non-unitary evolution is obtained by combining the generalized MT and ML bounds under the same metric. The generations and developments of QSL have successfully generalized the MT bounds. Even the ML bounds have been attempted to generalize, the current studies of ML bound are thought as the significantly harder task, and keep as the open questions. The influences of external environment and quantum system dynamics which include the role of entanglement in QSL for open dynamics and many-body systems, the relation between the maximum interaction speed and QSL in quantum spin systems, the non-Markovianity effect of the environment on accelerating the speed of evolution have been investigated. Furthermore, by employing the gauge invariant distance in the Riemannian metric, we establish a distinct QSL bound, which relates the quantum speed limit time to the geometry phase, and presents the geometric and gauge invariant properties of it. The bound shows the impacts of the transmission modes of the state vectors on the evolution path in the manifold. Different from the established MT and ML bounds, our bound establishes the relation between the QSL and the Pancharatnam connection 1-form, and our results show that the QSL can be controlled via manipulating the generalized Pahcharatnam connection. Also, our results of QSL are holonomy via the generalized Pahcharatnam connection, which show us a possible technique to speed up the holonomic quantum computation. The bound is also interesting to the metrology and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, etc. QSL has also been studied in the quantum representation of Wigner function. In the future research of quantum speed limit, there are many issues that need to be considered, such as the generalized ML bound, the unified QSL bound under different metrics, the application of maximum rate of quantum information derived from the QSL, and the relation between the quantum speed limit and the quantum heat engine, etc.