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Open Systems & Information Dynamics

Breaking of the Similarity Principle in Markov Generators of Low Density Limit Type and the Role of Degeneracies in the Landscape of Invariant States

Luigi Accardi, J. C. García-Corte, F. Guerrero-Poblete, Roberto B. Quezada

Published Dec 1, 2020• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The similarity principle is an extension of the principle of thermal relaxation that naturally arises in the stochastic limit of quantum theory. We construct examples of Low Density Limit (LDL) generators, associated to an environment state in equilibrium at inverse temperature β, which admit non-(β, HS)-equilibrium states. We prove that in some cases, the attraction domain of the (β, HS)-equilibrium state is empty. This means that the similarity principle, in its original thermodynamical formulation, can be broken in the LDL limit. This result is obtained as a consequence of a more general phenomenon: the role of degeneracies in the spectrum of the Liouvillian of the system Hamiltonian associated to the generator. We start from the definition of LDL type generators given in [5] and we introduce a finer classification of these generators based on the above degeneracies. The simplest subclass, called 2-generic, is a nontrivial extension of the generators associated to the so-called Λ and V configurations, widely used in quantum optics and involving 2 levels of the system Hamiltonian. Since each 2-generic block involves 3 or 4 levels of the system Hamiltonian we expect that they can reveal some interesting new physical phenomenon, as it happened in the 2-level case. In the last section, we restrict our attention to a 3-level system with a Hamiltonian that is associated to a class of 2-generic LDL generators. Finally, we prove that, for some LDL generators in this class the statement formulated at the beginning holds true.

DOI
10.1142/s1230161220500183

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The similarity principle is an extension of the principle of thermal relaxation that naturally arises in the stochastic limit of quantum theory. We construct examples of Low Density Limit (LDL) generators, associated to an environment state in equilibrium at inverse temperature β, which admit non-(β, HS)-equilibrium states. We prove that in some cases, the attraction domain of the (β, HS)-equilibrium state is empty. This means that the similarity principle, in its original thermodynamical formulation, can be broken in the LDL limit. This result is obtained as a consequence of a more general phenomenon: the role of degeneracies in the spectrum of the Liouvillian of the system Hamiltonian associated to the generator. We start from the definition of LDL type generators given in [5] and we introduce a finer classification of these generators based on the above degeneracies. The simplest subclass, called 2-generic, is a nontrivial extension of the generators associated to the so-called Λ and V configurations, widely used in quantum optics and involving 2 levels of the system Hamiltonian. Since each 2-generic block involves 3 or 4 levels of the system Hamiltonian we expect that they can reveal some interesting new physical phenomenon, as it happened in the 2-level case. In the last section, we restrict our attention to a 3-level system with a Hamiltonian that is associated to a class of 2-generic LDL generators. Finally, we prove that, for some LDL generators in this class the statement formulated at the beginning holds true.
We investigate the structure of quantum Markov generators that describe the reduced dynamics of a test particle interacting with a dilute Bose gas in the low density limit. These generators, called low density limit type generators (LDL), differ from the weak coupling limit type generators (WCL) studied in [4, 5] because of the presence of the T-operator that describes the change in momentum of the gas particle due to collisions with the test particle. We propose a general definition of Markov generator of stochastic limit type that includes (almost) all generators arising in the stochastic limit approach and we prove that the associated semigroups as well as their invariant states (or weights) have a very special structure which extends the explicit representation for the generic quantum Markov semigroups of weak coupling limit type, due to Accardi, Hachicha and Ouerdiane [7]. We also investigate the structure of invariant states and give conditions on the T - operator for the existence of a unique invariant state and of equilibrium states.
The second law of thermodynamics, for quantum systems, is formulated, on the microscopic level. As for classical systems, such a formulation is only possible when specific conditions are satisfied (continuous spectrum, nonvanishing of the collision operator, etc.). The unitary dynamical group can then be mapped into two contractive semigroups, reaching equilibrium either for t --> +infinity or for t --> -infinity. The second law appears as a symmetry-breaking selection principle, limiting the observables and density functions to the class that tends to thermodynamic equilibrium in the future (for t --> +infinity). The physical content of the dynamical structure is now displayed in terms of the appropriate semigroup, which is realized through a nonunitary transformation. The superposition principle of quantum mechanics has to be reconsidered as irreversible processes transform pure states into mixtures and unitary transformations are limited by the requirement that entropy remains invariant. In the semigroup representation, interacting fields lead to units that behave incoherently at equilibrium. Inversely, nonequilibrium constraints introduce correlations between these units.
We study a class of generic quantum Markov semigroups on the algebra of all bounded operators on a Hilbert space h arising from the stochastic limit of a discrete system with generic Hamiltonian HS, acting on h, interacting with a Gaussian, gauge invariant, reservoir. The selfadjoint operator HS determines a privileged orthonormal basis of h. These semigroups leave invariant diagonal and off-diagonal bounded operators with respect to this basis. The action on diagonal operators describes a classical Markov jump process. We construct generic semigroups from their formal generators by the minimal semigroup method and discuss their conservativity (uniqueness). When the semigroup is irreducible we prove uniqueness of the equilibrium state and show that, starting from an arbitrary initial state, the semigroup converges towards this state. We also prove that the exponential speed of convergence of the quantum Markov semigroup coincides with the exponential speed of convergence of the classical (diagonal) semigroup towards its unique invariant measure. The exponential speed is computed or estimated in some examples.
We prove that generic quantum local Hamiltonians are gapless. In fact, we prove that there is a continuous density of states above the ground state. The Hamiltonian can be on a lattice in any spatial dimension or on a graph with a bounded maximum vertex degree. The type of interactions allowed for include translational invariance in a disorder (i.e., probabilistic) sense with some assumptions on the local distributions. Examples include many-body localization and random spin models. We calculate the scaling of the gap with the system's size when the local terms are distributed according to a Gaussian β orthogonal random matrix ensemble. As a corollary, there exist finite size partitions with respect to which the ground state is arbitrarily close to a product state. When the local eigenvalue distribution is discrete, in addition to the lack of an energy gap in the limit, we prove that the ground state has finite size degeneracies. The proofs are simple and constructive. This work excludes the important class of truly translationally invariant Hamiltonians where the local terms are all equal.
The authors conclude a research programme developed by various authors in several papers. The basic idea of this programme is to explain the irreversible behaviour of quantum systems as a limiting case (in a sense to be made precise) of usual quantum dynamics. One starts with a system interacting with a reservoir and, in the first attempts to deal with this problem, only limits of observables of the system and deduced master equations were considered. In their approach they study the limits of quantities related to the whole compound system. As a corollary they obtain an explanation of the physical origins of the quantum Brownian motion. They study the low-density limit of a system coupled to a quasi-free boson reservoir in the equilibrium state at inverse temperature beta and fugacity z, through an interaction of the scattering type, i.e. one which preserves the total number of particles of the reservoir.
A new microcanonical equilibrium state is introduced for quantum systems with finite-dimensional state spaces. Equilibrium is characterised by a uniform distribution on a level surface of the expectation value of the Hamiltonian. The distinguishing feature of the proposed equilibrium state is that the corresponding density of states is a continuous function of the energy, and hence thermodynamic functions are well defined for finite quantum systems. The density of states, however, is not in general an analytic function. It is demonstrated that generic quantum systems therefore exhibit second-order (i.e. continuous) phase transitions at finite temperatures.