Memory as a Property of Nature

Pieter Kok

Yu Chen Guo, Philip Taranto, Bi‐Heng Liu +4 more

Physical systems are inevitably coupled to their environment, leading to memory effects that influence observed statistics; the duration, strength and structure of which are crucial properties of the evolution. Due to the invasive nature of measurement, such properties must be defined with respect to the instruments used to probe the dynamics. Using a photonic platform, we experimentally demonstrate the necessity of describing quantum memory properties in an instrument-specific manner via two paradigmatic processes: the first has finite memory with respect to a quantum measurement; the second, a noisy classical measurement. The former example highlights that future-history correlations can be deterministically erased via quantum measurement, whereas the latter distinguishes quantum from classical measurements: although the classical measurement blocks the history, the process exhibits temporal correlations for more general quantum interrogations. Our methods are relevant to constructing processes with desired memory structures, as required to develop efficient quantum technologies.

Yaroslav Barsukov

V. A. Kuz’menko

It is proposed to use the light-pulse atom interferometry for experimental study of some properties of quantum memory.

Tomáš Rybár

Abstract Quantum memory channels represent a very general, yet simple and comprehensible model for causal processes. As such they have attracted considerable research interest, mostly aimed on their transfer capabilities and structure properties. Most notably it was shown that memory channels can be implemented via physically naturally motivated collision models. We also define the concept of repeatable channels and show that only unital channels can be implemented repeatably with pure memory channels. In the special case of qubit channels we also show that every unital qubit channel has a repeatable implementation. We also briefly explore the possibilities of stroboscopical simulation of channels and show that all random unitary channels can be stroboscopically simulated. Particularly in qubit case, all indivisible qubit channels are also random unitary, hence for qubit all indivisible channels can be stroboscopically simulated. Memory channels also naturally capture the framework of correlated experiments. We develop methods to gather and interpret data obtained in such setting and in detail examine the two qubit case. We also show that for control unitary interactions the measured data will never contradict a simple unitary evolution. Thus no memory effects can be spotted then.

Wouter J. Hanegraaff