In the present paper we study the entanglement properties of thermal (a.k.a. Gibbs) states of quantum harmonic oscillator systems as functions of the Hamiltonian and the temperature. We prove the p...
In the present paper we study the entanglement properties of thermal (a.k.a.~\emph{Gibbs}) states of quantum harmonic oscillator systems as functions of the Hamiltonian and the temperature. We prove the physical intuition that at sufficiently high temperatures the thermal state becomes fully separable and we deduce bounds on the critical temperature at which this happens. We show that the bound becomes tight for a wide class of Hamiltonians with sufficient translation symmetry. We find, that at the crossover the thermal energy is of the order of the energy of the strongest normal mode of the system and quantify the degree of entanglement below the critical temperature. Finally, we discuss the example of a ring topology in detail and compare our results with previous work in an entanglement-phase diagram.
A meaningful description of the low-energy dynamics of multipartite entanglement is provided\nfor harmonic oscillator systems in general dissipative scenarios. Without doing any\ncentral approximation, this mainly relies on a set of reasonable physical statements on the\nenvironment and system-environment interaction consistent with a linear analysis of the\nopen-system dynamics.\nWe rst investigate the inseparability properties of arbitrary entangled states, which\ngenerally entails an optimization procedure of certain functional de ned in the in nitedimensional\nHilbert space of continuous-variable systems. Using a Gaussian-like assumption\nanalogous to that used in the derivation of Gaussian entanglement of formation, we\nderive a computational-e cient form of such functional which considerable simpli es the\noptimization task. This consists on a hierarchy of separability criteria that permit in a\nuni ed way to characterize k-partite entanglement of broad classes of Gaussian and non-\nGaussian states. The strength of the criteria is proven by showing that they satisfactorily\nreproduce previous results from the theory of entanglement, like PPT criterion applied to\narbitrary two-mode and pure three-mode Gaussian states.\nThe separability criteria allow to monitor the transient evolution of multipartite entanglement\nunder the environmental in\nuence, this permitted to show that non-Gaussian\nentanglement may be as robust against harmful dissipative e ects and thermal noise as\nGaussian one. We devote special attention to the stationary properties of tripartite entanglement\nwhen the system oscillators are in contact with either a common environment\nor independent environments at initial di erent temperatures. For the former dissipative\nscheme, it is shown that the environment mediates an e ective many-party interaction with\na spatial long-range feature between system oscillators, which is able to generate tripartite\nentanglement whereas two-mode entanglement is degraded. Regarding the second scheme,\nit is illustrated that thermal non-equilibrium conditions result in a rich variety of quantum\ncorrelations, however a temperature gradient eventually destroys the entanglement shared\nby the system oscillators as a consequence of the growth of thermal noise. Finally, the\nstationary entanglement and energy current across a nite harmonic chain are studied in\ndetail by doing an extensive numerical analysis of both phenomena for a broad range of the\nparameters (i.e., temperatures, oscillator frequencies, and oscillator coupling strengths).\nOur numerical ndings are discussed in terms of the derived energy current expressions,\nthese show an explicit dependence on the two-time correlation functions (between oscillator\noperators) which carry quantum correlations.
This is the second of a series of three papers examining how viable it is for entanglement to be sustained at high temperatures for quantum systems in thermal equilibrium (Case A), in nonequilibrium (Case B) and in nonequilibrium steady state (NESS) conditions (Case C). The system we analyze here consists of two coupled quantum harmonic oscillators each interacting with its own bath described by a scalar field, set at temperatures T 1 > T 2. For constant bilinear inter-oscillator coupling studied here (Case C1) owing to the Gaussian nature, the problem can be solved exactly at arbitrary temperatures even for strong coupling. We find that the valid entanglement criterion in general is not a function of the bath temperature difference, in contrast to thermal transport in the same NESS setting [1]. Thus lowering the temperature of one of the thermal baths does not necessarily help to safeguard the entanglement between the oscillators. Indeed, quantum entanglement will disappear if any one of the thermal baths has a temperature higher than the critical temperature T c, defined as the temperature above which quantum entanglement vanishes. With the Langevin equations derived we give a full display of how entanglement dynamics in this system depends on T 1, T 2, the inter-oscillator coupling and the system-bath coupling strengths. For weak oscillator-bath coupling the critical temperature T c is about the order of the inverse oscillator frequency, but for strong oscillator-bath coupling it will depend on the bath cutoff frequency. We conclude that in most realistic circumstances, for bosonic systems in NESS with constant bilinear coupling, ‘hot entanglement’ is largely a fiction.
In this study, we investigate a quantum harmonic oscillator interacting with a thermal bath of oscillatory fields in a quantum circuit. By solving the Lindblad master equation, we calculate the resulting interference pattern from measuring the system in the momentum space. Interestingly, we show that even if one considers the decoherence effect, the system will keep some of its quantum properties. Indeed, the equilibration does not completely leave the system in a Gibbs state, and the system remains coherent. Moreover we discuss the requirements of a process that can be called a thermalization. We show that in our system, the quantum thermodynamic equilibration process cannot be considered a thermalization. Also, we discussed that a Lindblad system-bath interaction cannot be explained by a thermalization process. Such an effect strongly can be detected when the frequency of the central system is high and the temperature is low. Then, by introducing an entropy measure, we show that although the system is in maximum entropy, the equilibrium state is far from the Gibbs state.