For the purpose of understanding the quantum behavior such as quantum decoherence, fluctuations, dissipation, entanglement and teleportation of a mesoscopic or macroscopic object interacting with a general environment, we derive here a set of exact master equations for the reduced density matrix of N interacting harmonic oscillators in a heat bath with arbitrary spectral density and temperature. For the case N = 2, we also give an influence functional treatment of this model and provide explicit expressions for the evolution operator of the reduced density matrix which are useful for the study of decoherence and disentanglement issues. We show a simple application of this master equation by examining the decoherence and disentanglement of two harmonic oscillators due to their interaction with a common environment under Markovian approximation. Two classes of problems of interest to us which these equations can be usefully applied to are that of the quantum dynamics of nanoelectromechanical oscillators and the entanglement evolution of multi-partite macroscopic states such as quantum superposition of mirrors in a high Q cavity. To address a key conceptual issue for macroscopic quantum phenomena we examine the conditions for an assumption often implicitly made in these studies to be valid, namely, that the quantum behavior of a macroscopic object in an environment can be accurately represented by only treating the dynamics of its center-of-mass variable. We also mention how these results can be used to calculate the uncertainty principle governing a macroscopic object at finite temperature.
For the purpose of understanding the quantum behavior such as quantum decoherence, fluctuations, dissipation, entanglement and teleportation of a mesoscopic or macroscopic object interacting with a general environment, we derive here a set of exact master equations for the reduced density matrix of N interacting harmonic oscillators in a heat bath with arbitrary spectral density and temperature. For the case N = 2, we also give an influence functional treatment of this model and provide explicit expressions for the evolution operator of the reduced density matrix which are useful for the study of decoherence and disentanglement issues. We show a simple application of this master equation by examining the decoherence and disentanglement of two harmonic oscillators due to their interaction with a common environment under Markovian approximation. Two classes of problems of interest to us which these equations can be usefully applied to are that of the quantum dynamics of nanoelectromechanical oscillators and the entanglement evolution of multi-partite macroscopic states such as quantum superposition of mirrors in a high Q cavity. To address a key conceptual issue for macroscopic quantum phenomena we examine the conditions for an assumption often implicitly made in these studies to be valid, namely, that the quantum behavior of a macroscopic object in an environment can be accurately represented by only treating the dynamics of its center-of-mass variable. We also mention how these results can be used to calculate the uncertainty principle governing a macroscopic object at finite temperature.
In this paper we derive an exact master equation for two coupled quantum harmonic oscillators interacting via bilinear coupling with a common environment at arbitrary temperature made up of many harmonic oscillators with a general spectral density function. We first show a simple derivation based on the observation that the two harmonic oscillator model can be effectively mapped into that of a single harmonic oscillator in a general environment plus a free harmonic oscillator. Since the exact one harmonic oscillator master equation is available [B. L. Hu, J. P. Paz, and Y. Zhang, Phys. Rev. D 45, 2843 (1992)], the exact master equation with all its coefficients for this two harmonic oscillator model can be easily deduced from the known results of the single harmonic oscillator case. In the second part we give an influence functional treatment of this model and provide explicit expressions for the evolutionary operator of the reduced density matrix which are useful for the study of decoherence and disentanglement issues. We show three applications of this master equation: on the decoherence and disentanglement of two harmonic oscillators due to their interaction with a common environment under Markovian approximation, and a derivation of the uncertainty principle at finite temperature for a composite object, modeled by two interacting harmonic oscillators. The exact master equation for two, and its generalization to N, harmonic oscillators interacting with a general environment are expected to be useful for the analysis of quantum coherence, entanglement, fluctuations, and dissipation of mesoscopic objects toward the construction of a theoretical framework for macroscopic quantum phenomena.
We revisit the model of a system made up of a Brownian quantum oscillator under the influence of an external classical force and linearly coupled to an environment made up of many quantum oscillators at zero or finite temperature. We show that the HPZ master equation for the reduced density matrix derived earlier [B.L. Hu, J.P. Paz, Y. Zhang, Phys. Rev. D 45, 2843 (1992)] with coefficients obtained from solutions of integro-differential equations can assume closed functional forms for a fairly general class of spectral densities of the environment at arbitrary temperature and coupling strength. As an illustration of these new results we solve the corresponding master equation and calculate, among other physical quantities, the uncertainty function whose late time behavior can be obtained fully. This produces a formula for investigating the standard quantum limit which is central to addressing many theoretical issues in macroscopic quantum phenomena and experimental concerns related to low temperature precision measurements. We find that any initial state always settles down to a Gaussian density matrix whose covariance is determined by the thermal reservoir and whose mean is determined by the external force. For more general spectra we show that the solution of the master equation can be reduced to solving for the motion of a classical parametric oscillator with parametric frequency determined by the unsolved for master equation coefficients. States in these systems experience evolution that is parametrically similar to the simpler evolution explicitly determined for in the case of Laurent-series spectra.
We revisit the model of a system made up of a Brownian quantum oscillator linearly coupled to an environment made up of many quantum oscillators at finite temperature. We show that the HPZ master equation for the reduced density matrix derived earlier [B.L. Hu, J.P. Paz, Y. Zhang, Phys. Rev. D 45, 2843 (1992)] has incorrectly specified coefficients for the case of nonlocal dissipation. We rederive the QBM master equation, correctly specifying all coefficients, and determine the position uncertainty to be free of excessive cutoff sensitivity. Our coefficients and solutions are reduced entirely to contour integration for analytic spectra at arbitrary temperature, coupling strength, and cut-off. As an illustration we calculate the master equation coefficients and solve the master equation for ohmic coupling (with finite cutoff) and example supra-ohmic and sub-ohmic spectral densities. We determine the effect of an external force on the quantum oscillator and also show that our representation of the master equation and solutions naturally extends to a system of multiple oscillators bilinearly coupled to themselves and the bath in arbitrary fashion. This produces a formula for investigating the standard quantum limit which is central to addressing many theoretical issues in macroscopic quantum phenomena and experimental concerns related to low temperature precision measurements. We find that in a dissipative environment, all initial states settle down to a Gaussian density matrix whose covariance is determined by the thermal reservoir and whose mean is determined by the external force. We specify the thermal covariance for the spectral densities we explore.
Abstract We present an exact analytical solution of the Hu–Paz–Zhang master equation in a precise Markovian limit for a system of two harmonically coupled harmonic oscillators interacting with a common thermal bath of harmonic oscillators. The thermal bath is initially considered to be at arbitrary temperatures and characterized by an Ohmic Lorentz–Drude spectral density. In the examined system, couplings between the two harmonic oscillators and the environment ensure a complete decoupling of the center-of-mass and relative degrees of freedom, resulting in undamped dynamics in the relative coordinate. The exact time evolution is used to analyze the system’s entanglement dynamics, quantified through logarithmic negativity and quantum mutual information, while ensuring the positivity of the density operator to confirm the physical validity of the results. We demonstrate that, under certain parameter regimes and initial conditions, the asymptotic dynamics can give rise to periodic entanglement-disentanglement behavior. Furthermore, numerical simulations reveal that for negative values of the direct coupling between the oscillators, which are sufficiently close to a critical lower bound beyond which the system becomes unstable, the system can maintain entanglement across a broad temperature range and for arbitrarily long durations.
An original method to exactly solve the non-Markovian master equation describing the interaction of a single harmonic oscillator with a quantum environment in the weak-coupling limit is reported. By using a superoperatorial approach, we succeed in deriving the operatorial solution for the density matrix of the system. Our method is independent of the physical properties of the environment. We show the usefulness of our solution deriving explicit expressions for the dissipative time evolution of some observables of physical interest for the system, such as, for example, its mean energy.
We study entanglement dynamics in quantum Brownian motion (QBM) models. Our main tool is the Wigner function propagator. Time evolution in the Wigner picture is physically intuitive and it leads to a simple derivation of a master equation for any number of system harmonic oscillators and spectral density of the environment. It also provides generalized uncertainty relations, valid for any initial state, that allow a characterization of the environment in terms of the modifications it causes to the system's dynamics. In particular, the uncertainty relations are very informative about the entanglement dynamics of Gaussian states, and to a lesser extent for other families of states. For concreteness, we apply these techniques to a bipartite QBM model, describing the processes of entanglement creation, disentanglement, and decoherence at all temperatures and time scales.