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Physical Review A

Environment-induced sudden change of coherence in quantum systems

Yu Meng, Shang Yu, Zhian Jia, Yi‐Tao Wang, Zhi‐Jin Ke, Wei Liu, Zhipeng Li, Yuan-Ze Yang, Hang Wang, Yu-Chun Wu, Jian‐Shun Tang, Chuan‐Feng Li, Guang‐Can Guo

Published Oct 28, 2020• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Manipulating dynamical evolution is an important task in quantum information. The sudden death phenomenon (SDP), which is predicted to be unattainable beyond entanglement [T. Yu and J. H. Eberly, Sudden death of entanglement, Science 323, 598 (2009)], would be an especially surprising feature in quantum coherence. In this paper, we modulate the spatial modes of photons and build a spatially inclined channel using a series of specially made quartz plate pairs. Within this channel, sudden changes in coherence occur in open-quantum systems. We, then, describe the SDP within a general theoretical framework of sudden quantum-coherence changes and by defining the $n\mathrm{th}$-order sudden coherence change. Moreover, by adding non-Markovian noise, we find that coherence can rebirth after a sudden death. We further compare the sudden change features in coherence and quantum entanglement. We find that both coherence and entanglement perform identical dynamical processes upon Bell diagonal states, although their dynamical characteristics change when the initial state is partially entangled. Our results provide insights into the sudden change phenomena of quantum correlations beyond entanglement along with intriguing perspectives on quantum coherence dynamics.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.102.042415

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Manipulating dynamical evolution is an important task in quantum information. The sudden death phenomenon (SDP), which is predicted to be unattainable beyond entanglement [T. Yu and J. H. Eberly, Sudden death of entanglement, Science 323, 598 (2009)], would be an especially surprising feature in quantum coherence. In this paper, we modulate the spatial modes of photons and build a spatially inclined channel using a series of specially made quartz plate pairs. Within this channel, sudden changes in coherence occur in open-quantum systems. We, then, describe the SDP within a general theoretical framework of sudden quantum-coherence changes and by defining the nthn\mathrm{th}nth-order sudden coherence change. Moreover, by adding non-Markovian noise, we find that coherence can rebirth after a sudden death. We further compare the sudden change features in coherence and quantum entanglement. We find that both coherence and entanglement perform identical dynamical processes upon Bell diagonal states, although their dynamical characteristics change when the initial state is partially entangled. Our results provide insights into the sudden change phenomena of quantum correlations beyond entanglement along with intriguing perspectives on quantum coherence dynamics.
In this paper, the origin of disentanglement for two specific sub-classes of [Formula: see text]-states namely maximally nonlocal mixed states (MNMSs) and maximally entangled mixed states (MEMSs) is investigated analytically for a physical system consisting of two spatially separated qubits interacting with a common vacuum bath. The phenomena of entanglement sudden death (ESD) and the entanglement sudden birth (ESB) are observed, but the characteristics of ESD and ESB are found to be different for the case of two-photon coherence and single photon coherence states. The role played by initial coherence for the underlying entanglement dynamics is investigated. Further, the entanglement dynamics of MNMSs and MEMSs under different environmental noises namely phase damping, amplitude damping and random telegraph noise (RTN) noise with respect to the decay and revival of entanglement is analyzed. It is observed that the single photon coherence states are more robust against the sudden death of entanglement, indicating the usability of such states in the development of technologies for the practical implementation of quantum information processing tasks.
Quantum entanglement, the essential resource for quantum information processing, has rich dynamics under different environments. Probing different entanglement dynamics typically requires exquisite control of complicated system-environment coupling in real experimental systems. Here, by a simple control of the effective solid-state spin bath in a diamond sample, we observe rich entanglement dynamics, including the conventional asymptotic decay as well as the entanglement sudden death, a term coined for the phenomenon of complete disappearance of entanglement after a short finite time interval. Furthermore, we observe counterintuitive entanglement rebirth after its sudden death in the same diamond sample by tuning an experimental parameter, demonstrating that we can conveniently control the non-Markovianity of the system-environment coupling through a natural experimental knob. Further tuning of this experimental knob can make the entanglement dynamics completely coherent under the same environmental coupling. Probing of entanglement dynamics, apart from its fundamental interest, may find applications in quantum information processing through control of the environmental coupling.
Entanglement sudden death (ESD), explored through a series of works by Yu and Eberly, supports the notion of entanglement vanishing abruptly and completely at a finite time, even when the underlying open-system dynamics remain smooth. In this article, we revisit the development of ESD from bipartite origins to genuine multipartite entanglement. We first illustrate the canonical mechanism of ESD with two independently damped qubits, for which the concurrence vanishes at a finite time while populations and coherences remain nonzero. We next present our results on multipartite entanglement for generalized GHZ states under depolarization. Global and independent local depolarizing dynamics can be chosen to produce identical reduced evolution for every individual qubit, yet they yield different genuine-multipartite-entanglement sudden death times, whose ordering can reverse with the initial state. For N-qubit GHZ states, this distinction becomes asymptotically stronger since the ESD time scales as 1/N under independent local depolarization, whereas under global depolarization it approaches a finite value in the thermodynamic limit. Echoing a central lesson of Prof. Eberly's work, we report the lifetime of multipartite entanglement is not fixed by the local dynamics, but rather depends on the evolution of the joint quantum state.
Decoherence due to the unwanted interaction between a quantum system and environment leads to the degradation of quantum coherence. In particular, for an entangled state, decoherence makes a loss of entanglement and Bell nonlocality known as entanglement sudden death (ESD), and Bell nonlocality sudden death (BNSD). Here, we theoretically investigate the entanglement and Bell nonlocality of a bipartite entangled state under three types of decoherence, amplitude damping, phase damping, and depolarizing. Our result provides the bound of decoherence strength that does not lose the entanglement and Bell nonlocality. In addition, we find two interesting features. One is that the entanglement can survive even though one of the entangled qubits is affected by a large strength of decoherence if the other qubit is affected by a small enough strength of decoherence except for the depolarizing. The second one is that when a specific form of entangled state is under amplitude damping, the Bell nonlocality shows an asymmetric behavior respect to the decoherence strengths on each qubit. Our work provides comprehensive information on ESD and BNSD for the bipartite entangled state which will be useful to implement quantum information processing in the presence of decoherence.
We investigate qubit entanglement dynamics in a two-qubit cavity system with stochastically fluctuating coupling strength, comparing white noise (Markovian) and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise (non-Markovian) processes. We analytically solve the system dynamics for both Fock and coherent cavity states and systematically characterize how initial qubit configurations affect entanglement generation and preservation. Our results reveal distinct dynamical regimes: in the Fock-state cavity, initial states in the single-excitation subspace generate robust qubit entanglement in decoherence-free subspaces, while initially entangled states in the double-excitation subspace exhibit inevitable decay without protective symmetries. For coherent cavities, we identify a critical photon-number threshold in the intermediate coherent-state amplitude regime where dynamics transition from low-frequency to high-frequency entanglement oscillations, while universal entanglement loss occurs at large amplitudes. Remarkable resilience against entanglement sudden death emerges under strong non-Markovian noise with long correlation times, where repeated revivals occur. These findings establish cavity photon statistics and environmental memory time as key control parameters for engineering qubit entanglement dynamics in qubit-cavity systems, revealing how system-environment correlations govern quantum information preservation.
Local Markovian noise cannot bring entanglement back, but it can bring magic back. Unlike separability, stabilizer membership is not preserved by local channels, allowing dissipation to push states out of the stabilizer polytope as well as in. Under local amplitude damping, the nnn-qubit GHZ family α∣0n⟩+β∣1n⟩α|0^n\rangle+β|1^n\rangleα∣0n⟩+β∣1n⟩ (0<α<β0<α<β0<α<β) loses its magic at a lower damping strength γ−γ_-γ−​ and regains it at a higher one γ+γ_+γ+​, while entanglement is irreversibly lost at γeγ_eγe​. This magic--entanglement complementarity, γe+γ+=1γ_e+γ_+=1γe​+γ+​=1 for every nnn, reflects a system--environment duality of amplitude damping. Within real phase-covariant Markovian semigroups the phenomenon is mapped out in full: zero-temperature rebirth occurs if and only if T2>T1T_2>T_1T2​>T1​, unital dynamics produce no rebirth, and sufficiently weak thermal excitation confines rebirth to a finite magic island ending in a second sudden death. For small ααα, the reborn magic resides in a fully separable state with all proper marginals stabilizer, yet parity-syndrome extraction concentrates it onto a single qubit for magic-state distillation, without loss of expected robustness and with optimal per-register yield α2/2α^2/2α2/2. Local dissipation further divides pure stabilizer states into magic-generators and magic-insulators: at two qubits, the Bell state ∣Φ+⟩|Φ^+\rangle∣Φ+⟩ generates magic immediately, while its Bell-state partner ∣Ψ+⟩|Ψ^+\rangle∣Ψ+⟩ remains stabilizer. Together, magic and entanglement reveal a symmetry invisible to either alone.