Dynamics of Open Quantum Systems

Chen, Chong, Ren‐Bao Liu

Open quantum systems (OQS's) are ubiquitous in non-equilibrium quantum dynamics and in quantum science and technology. Solving the dynamics of an OQS in a quantum many-body bath has been considered a computationally hard problem because of the dimensionality curse. Here, considering that full knowledge of the bath dynamics is unnecessary for describing the reduced dynamics of an OQS, we prove a polynomial complexity theorem, that is, the number of independent equations required to fully describe the dynamics of an OQS increases at most linearly with the evolution time and polynomially with the bath size. Therefore, efficient computational algorithms exist for solving the dynamics of a small-sized OQS (such as a qubit or an atom). We further prove that, when the dynamics of an OQS and the bath is represented by a tensor network, a tensor contraction procedure can be specified such that the bond dimension (i.e., the range of tensor indices contracted in each step) increases only linearly (rather than exponentially) with the evolution time, providing explicitly efficient algorithms for a wide range of OQS's. We demonstrate the theorems and the tensor-network algorithm by solving two widely encountered OQS problems, namely, a spin in a Gaussian bath (the spin-boson model) and a central spin coupled to many environmental spins (the Gaudin model). This work provides approaches to understanding dynamics of OQS's, learning the environments via quantum sensors, and optimizing quantum information processing in noisy environments.

Gernot Schaller

Hongbin Chen, Clemens Gneiting, Ping‐Yuan Lo +2 more

The incoherent dynamical properties of open quantum systems are generically attributed to an ongoing correlation between the system and its environment. Here, we propose a novel way to assess the nature of these system-environment correlations by examining the system dynamics alone. Our approach is based on the possibility or impossibility to simulate open-system dynamics with Hamiltonian ensembles. As we show, such (im)possibility to simulate is closely linked to the system-environment correlations. We thus define the nonclassicality of open-system dynamics in terms of the nonexistence of a Hamiltonian-ensemble simulation. This classifies any nonunital open-system dynamics as nonclassical. We give examples for open-system dynamics that are unital and classical, as well as unital and nonclassical.

Bassano Vacchini

Fei-Lei Xiong, Zeng‐Bing Chen

In the theory of open quantum systems, divisibility of the system dynamical maps is related to memory effects in the dynamics. By decomposing the system Hilbert space as a direct sum of several Hilbert spaces, we study the relationship among the corresponding dynamical maps. It is shown that if the dynamical maps of the open system possess a chain of invariant subspaces, there exists a divisibility hierarchy for their corresponding dynamics. Two classes of examples are given for illustrating these hierarchical structures. One is the pure-dephasing dynamics, and the other is the decay dynamics. Our results offer a systematic approach to obtaining the divisibility conditions and non-Markovian witnesses for these dynamics. Moreover, as a new way of decomposing open quantum systems, it is worthy of further study.

V. M. Akulin