The appearance of decoherence-recoherence events is analyzed in a dephasing model of a qubit which interacts with a bosonic environment. The initial condition is prepared from the thermal state of the whole system by performing a nonselective measurement on the qubit. Decoherence-recoherence events appear in the reduced dynamics of the qubit uniquely if special nonselective preparation measurements are adopted and the spectral density of the system fulfills determined conditions. General lower bounds are found for the number of decoherence-recoherence events in terms of the properties of the measurement scheme and of the spectral density. The number is finite for canonical spectral densities which are super-ohmic, perturbed super-ohmic, or ohmic at low frequencies and are arbitrarily tailored at high frequencies. The number is infinite in the sub-ohmic regime and for perturbations of the sub-ohmic or ohmic regime. Decoherence-recoherence times are evaluated, analytically and numerically, for ohmic-like spectral densities with exponential high-frequency cutoffs.
The appearance of decoherence-recoherence events is analyzed in a dephasing model of a qubit which interacts with a bosonic environment. The initial condition is prepared from the thermal state of the whole system by performing a nonselective measurement on the qubit. Decoherence-recoherence events appear in the reduced dynamics of the qubit uniquely if special nonselective preparation measurements are adopted and the spectral density of the system fulfills determined conditions. General lower bounds are found for the number of decoherence-recoherence events in terms of the properties of the measurement scheme and of the spectral density. The number is finite for canonical spectral densities which are super-ohmic, perturbed super-ohmic, or ohmic at low frequencies and are arbitrarily tailored at high frequencies. The number is infinite in the sub-ohmic regime and for perturbations of the sub-ohmic or ohmic regime. Decoherence-recoherence times are evaluated, analytically and numerically, for ohmic-like spectral densities with exponential high-frequency cutoffs.
The recoherence times t * and the maximum values of the recoherence increments γ extr are studied as functions of the bath parameters for a single qubit dephasing model, prepared initially by a special kind of the nonselective measurements. The recoherence-decoherence events (RDE), occurring at the initial stage of the system evolution, are found to be both similar and different from the system dynamics at large times. For instance, in contrast to the RDE observed on large timescales, the sub-Ohmic and Ohmic coupling regimes are more favorable for the short-time recoherence than the super-Ohmic one. On the other hand, the short-time behavior of the recoherence and the long-time dynamics of the decoherence are closely related: The domain of the ohmicity indexes, where the decoherence changes its type (from the complete to incomplete one), is, simultaneously, that of the weakest recoherence. The obtained results give us some hints about the basic characteristics of the environment, which might provide the most optimal values of t * and γ extr in some sense.
The loss of coherence in a general open quantum system interacting with a bosonic environment is analyzed. The reservoir is initially in a thermal state. The reduced dynamics is described by a non-Markovian time-local master equation. We consider spectral densities that are sub- or super-Ohmic at low frequencies and arbitrarily shaped at high frequencies. In the super-Ohmic regime, for noninteger frequency powers larger than 2, long time survival of coherence appears. In the latter regime, at vanishing temperature, the asymptotic amount of surviving coherence is stabilized to its initial value, up to a phase factor, by properly increasing the bandwidth and decreasing the low-frequency profile of the spectral density. For noninteger positive frequency powers less than 2, stretched exponential-like decoherence is found over long times. The relaxations to the asymptotic configurations become arbitrarily slow by approaching the frequency power 2 of the super-Ohmic regime. The same dependence on temperature, spectral density, and scale frequency appears for purity and concurrence of two qubits and coherence of a qubit.
The evolution of quantum coherence in a qubit is analyzed, over short and long times, in case the qubit interacts with a bosonic environment. The distribution of the frequency modes exhibits a low-frequency band gap. The initial conditions under study of the qubit and the bosonic environment are factorized or prepared with selective or nonselective measurements. The modulus of the coherence term of the reduced density matrix of the qubit evolves algebraically over short times and, due to the band gap, tends to the nonvanishing asymptotic value with damped oscillations. Depending on the measurement scheme, the nonselective preparation measurement can enhance quantum coherence or accelerate the decoherence process, over short times, according to dominant linear laws. Over long times, the nonselective preparation measurement produces the slowest-decaying envelope of the damped oscillations among the decoherence processes under study. Similar short- and long-time evolution is exhibited by the trace distance measure of two general states of the qubit.
The effects of the measurement apparatus on quantum coherence are studied by considering a purely dephasing model of a qubit. The initial state is prepared from a thermal state of the whole system by performing a nonselective measurement on the qubit. The magnitude of the initial postmeasurement coherence is bounded by the value [Formula: see text], which is realized with special measurement schemes and in the low-temperature limit. The coherence magnitude identically vanishes, increases or decreases with an approximately constant rate over a determined short-time scale, according to the choice of the preparation measurement. The maximization of the short-time increasing or decreasing rate is favored by the choice of other special measurement schemes and the high-temperature limit. The measurement apparatus allows to manipulate the quantum coherence of the qubit over short times via nonselective preparation measurements.
Abstract The non-Markovian dynamics of a qubit dephasing in a squeezed thermal environment with general Ohmic spectral density are investigated, and the analytical solution is presented for the models with sub-Ohmic, Ohmic, and super-Ohmic spectral densities in the zero-temperature limit. We study the non-Markovianity of the open qubit system, and find that it is very large in a certain regime of the squeezed parameters and almost vanishes outside this regime, given the parameters of the environmental spectrum. Furthermore, the non-Markovianity can be enhanced to surpass that of the unsqueezed case by adjusting the squeezing parameters. More interestingly, we find that given the other parameters, the non-Markovianity of a small coupling constant between the qubit and its environment may be larger than in the case of a large coupling constant; this is dependent on the competition between the coupling constant and the Ohmicity parameter of the environment. We also discuss the influence of squeezing operator on the quantum speed limit (QSL) time for the considered model, and find that the QSL time can be reduced via the adjustment of the squeezing operator.
Abstract Quantum probing is the art of exploiting simple quantum systems interacting with a complex environment to extract precise information about some environmental parameters, e.g. the temperature of the environment or its spectral density. Here we analyze the performance of a single-qubit probe in characterizing Ohmic bosonic environments at thermal equilibrium. In particular, we analyze the effects of tuning the interaction Hamiltonian between the probe and the environment, going beyond the traditional paradigm of pure dephasing. In the weak-coupling and short-time regime, we address the dynamics of the probe analytically, whereas numerical simulations are employed in the strong coupling and long-time regime. We then evaluate the quantum Fisher information for the estimation of the cutoff frequency and the temperature of the environment. Our results provide clear evidence that pure dephasing is not optimal, unless we focus attention to short times. In particular, we found several working regimes where the presence of a transverse interaction improves the maximum attainable precision, i.e. it increases the quantum Fisher information. We also explore the role of the initial state of the probe and of the probe characteristic frequency in determining the estimation precision, thus providing quantitative guidelines to design optimized detection to characterize bosonic environments at the quantum level.