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Journal of the Optical Society of America B

Non-Markovian coherence and entanglement transfer in a quantum version of Newton’s cradle

Qing-Xia Mu, Xinyu Zhao

Published Jan 11, 2017• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the quantum excitations and coherence transfer among several coupled quantum harmonic oscillators embedded in a non-Markovian common bath. The energy and coherence can be symmetrically transferred from one end of the array to the other end, reminiscent of momentum and energy transfer in a classical Newton’s cradle. The energy transfer in this “quantum cradle” exhibits the same pattern as the classical case. However, a fully quantized environment can significantly affect the transfer process in this “quantum cradle.” Particularly, the non-Markovian properties of the environment play a crucial role, manifested by the fact that memory effect can enhance the coherence transfer. Interestingly, the memory effect can also induce a transfer even if there are no direct couplings among harmonic oscillators. Last, it is also found that a higher central frequency of the environment may be helpful to entanglement transfer in the “quantum cradle.”

DOI
10.1364/josab.34.000366

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In this paper, we investigate the quantum excitations and coherence transfer among several coupled quantum harmonic oscillators embedded in a non-Markovian common bath. The energy and coherence can be symmetrically transferred from one end of the array to the other end, reminiscent of momentum and energy transfer in a classical Newton’s cradle. The energy transfer in this “quantum cradle” exhibits the same pattern as the classical case. However, a fully quantized environment can significantly affect the transfer process in this “quantum cradle.” Particularly, the non-Markovian properties of the environment play a crucial role, manifested by the fact that memory effect can enhance the coherence transfer. Interestingly, the memory effect can also induce a transfer even if there are no direct couplings among harmonic oscillators. Last, it is also found that a higher central frequency of the environment may be helpful to entanglement transfer in the “quantum cradle.”
In this manuscript, we study the Schrödinger cat state transfer in a quantum optical version of Newton's cradle in non-Markovian environment. Based on a non-Markovian master equation, we show that the cat state can be transferred purely through the memory effect of the non-Markovian common environment, even without any direct couplings between neighbor cavities. The mechanism of the environment induced cat state transfer is analyzed both analytically and numerically to demonstrate that the transfer is a unique phenomenon in non-Markovian regime. From this example, the non-Markovian environment is shown to be qualitatively different from the Markovian environment reflected by the finite versus zero residue coherence. Besides, we also show the influence of environmental parameters are crucial for the transfer. We hope the cat state transfer studied in this work may shed more light on the fundamental difference between non-Markovian and Markovian environments.
Abstract We contribute further to recent theoretical studies of entanglement dynamics in open quantum systems to include a continuous variable N-harmonic oscillator ring system bathed in Ornstein–Uhlenbeck noise. Despite the fact that harmonic oscillator systems are one of the most studied systems in physics, we believe that our work here is unique and sheds a new perspective in terms of a potential application. We present two sets of differential equations that govern the dynamics of N harmonic oscillators derived from first principles, one for a Markovian environment and the other for non-Markovian one. With these two sets, we are able to compare their entanglement dynamics between environments given an initial state of our oscillators. Across several system and environmental parameters, we show that the entanglement dynamics between oscillator pairs in a non-Markovian environment may be significantly enhanced in both magnitude and duration when compared to its Markovian approximation. We showcase this by numerically simulating a specific solution, i.e., we choose N = 4 oscillators, where two harmonic oscillators are initialized as a two-mode squeezed state while the remaining oscillators are vacuum states. By leveraging our N = 4 results, we consider a slightly larger number of oscillators, i.e., N = 6, and show how we can generate a hidden quantum network, in the absence of direct coupling, that may allow multiple parties to secretly and passively entangle oscillators in their possession. This is accomplished by exploiting the environmental memory effect and maintaining resonance with other oscillators or the central frequency in a shared non-Markovian bath, which may allow for autonomous entanglement distribution over a network of oscillators and aid in future quantum technologies.
We study the evolution of entanglement for a pair of coupled nonidentical harmonic oscillators in contact with an environment. For both cases of a common bath and of two separate baths for each of the oscillators, a full master equation is provided without rotating-wave approximation. The entanglement dynamics is analyzed as a function of the diversity between the oscillators' frequencies and their positive or negative mutual coupling and also the correlation between the occupation numbers. The singular effect of the resonance condition (identical oscillators) and its relationship with the possibility of preserving asymptotic entanglement are discussed. The importance of the bath's memory properties is investigated by comparing Markovian and non-Markovian evolutions.
We investigate the non-Markovian effects on the entanglement transfer to the distant non-interacting atom qubits, which are embedded in a coupled superconducting resonator. The master equation governing the dynamics of the system is derived by the non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (NMQSD) method. Based on the solution, we show that the memory effect of the environment can lead to higher entanglement revival and make the entanglement last for a longer time. That is to say, the non-Markovian environment can enhance the entanglement transfer. It is also found that the maximum entanglement transferred to distant atoms can be modified by appropriately selecting the frequency of the modulated inter-cavity coupling. Moreover, with the initial anti-correlated state, the entanglement between the cavity fields can be almost completely transferred to the separated atoms. Lastly, we show that the memory effect has a significant impact on the generation of entanglement from the initial non-entangled states.
We address the dynamics of nonclassicality for a quantum system interacting with a noisy fluctuating environment described by a classical stochastic field. As a paradigmatic example, we consider a harmonic oscillator initially prepared in a maximally nonclassical state, e.g., a Fock number state or a Schr\"odinger-cat-like state, and then coupled to either a resonant or a nonresonant external field. Stochastic modeling allows us to describe the decoherence dynamics without resorting to approximated quantum master equations and to introduce non-Markovian effects in a controlled way. A detailed comparison among different nonclassicality criteria and a thorough analysis of the decoherence time reveal a rich phenomenology whose main features may be summarized as follows: (i) Classical memory effects increase the survival time of quantum coherence and (ii) a detuning between the natural frequency of the system and the central frequency of the classical field induces revivals of quantum coherence.