The challenge of harnessing entanglement during the non-equilibrium dynamics of open quantum systems, especially at high temperatures, is highly prominent within recent scientific researches. Due to the ongoing trend of miniaturization of quantum devices that exploit quantum correlations, proposing novel schemes to overcome this challenge is itself a crucial task within current quantum technological research. We contribute to this research by proposing a new scheme to control entanglement dynamics of a non-equilibrium two-qubit Heisenberg XXZ spin chain model in an external magnetic field. The design of the scheme is based on a coupling asymmetry in the model induced by the asymmetrical connection of qubits to two independent thermal reservoirs. While in the absence of the coupling asymmetry, non-equilibrium effects generally suppress the dynamical generation of thermal entanglement, making entanglement production impossible at high mean temperatures of reservoirs, it is shown that this asymmetry in the coupling potentially enables us to generate a maximal non-equilibrium entanglement even in the high mean temperature regime. We show that the coupling asymmetry can also lead to a complete protection of the maximum initial entanglement between the qubits at high mean temperatures of the reservoirs thanks to the non-equilibrium conditions. Depending on the initial state of the two qubits, this can be achieved either by accessing a coherence-free subspace or by fully reviving the initial qubit-qubit entanglement. Furthermore, we investigate the quantum heat transport of the chain, and find that by turning on the asymmetry in the qubit-reservoir coupling, although the chain loses its initial thermal rectification property over time, it regains this property and maintain it until the non-equilibrium steady state is reached. Our results show that, at higher temperature gradients, the chain leverages the steady-state entanglement to completely block the heat released from the hot reservoir. Our findings can be significant for heat management in quantum computing devices such as solid-state thermal circuits.
The challenge of harnessing entanglement during the non-equilibrium dynamics of open quantum systems, especially at high temperatures, is highly prominent within recent scientific researches. Due to the ongoing trend of miniaturization of quantum devices that exploit quantum correlations, proposing novel schemes to overcome this challenge is itself a crucial task within current quantum technological research. We contribute to this research by proposing a new scheme to control entanglement dynamics of a non-equilibrium two-qubit Heisenberg XXZ spin chain model in an external magnetic field. The design of the scheme is based on a coupling asymmetry in the model induced by the asymmetrical connection of qubits to two independent thermal reservoirs. While in the absence of the coupling asymmetry, non-equilibrium effects generally suppress the dynamical generation of thermal entanglement, making entanglement production impossible at high mean temperatures of reservoirs, it is shown that this asymmetry in the coupling potentially enables us to generate a maximal non-equilibrium entanglement even in the high mean temperature regime. We show that the coupling asymmetry can also lead to a complete protection of the maximum initial entanglement between the qubits at high mean temperatures of the reservoirs thanks to the non-equilibrium conditions. Depending on the initial state of the two qubits, this can be achieved either by accessing a coherence-free subspace or by fully reviving the initial qubit-qubit entanglement. Furthermore, we investigate the quantum heat transport of the chain, and find that by turning on the asymmetry in the qubit-reservoir coupling, although the chain loses its initial thermal rectification property over time, it regains this property and maintain it until the non-equilibrium steady state is reached. Our results show that, at higher temperature gradients, the chain leverages the steady-state entanglement to completely block the heat released from the hot reservoir. Our findings can be significant for heat management in quantum computing devices such as solid-state thermal circuits.
Quantum heat transport governs energy exchange processes and statistical laws in non-equilibrium quantum systems, and plays a pivotal role in quantum thermodynamics. We investigate the steady-state thermal transport of a noncommuting coupled spin system. We employ the quantum dressed master equation approach within the framework of open quantum system theory to accurately analyze the non-equilibrium dynamics, ensuring the validity of transport results in the strong coupling regime. Our results demonstrate that noncommuting spin coupling serves as a significant resource for modulating the nonlinearity of the heat current. Specifically, in the weak spin-coupling regime, the system exhibits robust negative differential thermal conductance (NDTC) across various spin numbers. By deriving analytical expressions for the heat current in both the single-spin and large-spin limits, we reveal that this NDTC behavior is governed by microscopic cycle fluxes. Physically, this arises because spin excitation channels induced by the cold reservoir are suppressed under a large temperature bias, thereby blocking energy exchange cycles. Conversely, in the strong spin-coupling and large temperature bias regime, the quantum system demonstrates pronounced thermal rectification. This high rectification efficiency originates from the unidirectional saturation of the heat current, rendering the system a promising candidate for high-performance thermal diodes. Furthermore, we extend the model to a three-terminal configuration to construct a quantum thermal transistor. By manipulating the temperature of the gate reservoir, we achieve efficient modulation and amplification of heat flow between the source and drain. The heat amplification factor is shown to far exceed unity in specific operating regions, confirming significant thermal amplification.
This paper explores thermal quantum memory-assisted entropic uncertainty, Bell-non-locality, and entanglement in a two-qubit Heisenberg XXX chain with x-directional Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) and Kaplan-Shekhtman-Entin-Wohlman-Aharony (KSEA) interactions in thermal equilibrium. We find this crucial that the initial degree of nonlocality and entanglement in the two-qubit state entirely depends upon the temperature, orientation, and strength of the DM and KSEA interaction of the magnetic field. Among many other situations, the magnetic field characterized by DM interaction with minimal temperature, exchange coupling strength, and KSEA interaction is the most reliable for generating and maintaining maximal nonlocality and entanglement while completely suppressing entropic uncertainty. On the other hand, repeated revivals and non-Markovian dynamics have been observed when the magnetic field is characterized by exchange coupling constant, DM and KSEA interaction with a higher temperature limit. Except for temperature-based magnetic fields, we show that maximal entanglement and nonlocality are generated and preserved in the two qubits with zero-order entropic uncertainty, which we believe is a better result than previous studies.
Abstract We study the entanglement generated in the steady state of two interacting qubits coupled to thermal reservoirs. We show that the amount of steady-state entanglement can be enhanced by the presence of a third thermal reservoir which is common to both qubits. Specifically, we find that entanglement can be enhanced as long as the temperature of the common reservoir is below the thermalisation temperature of the qubits, whenever a single temperature can be assigned to the steady state of the qubits in the absence of the common reservoir. Moreover, the amount of entanglement generated with the common reservoir present can be significantly larger than that which can be obtained without it for any temperature of the individual reservoirs. From the perspective of thermodynamics, we find that enhancement of entanglement is associated with heat absorption by the common reservoir. We propose a possible implementation of our scheme in superconducting circuits and find that a significant enhancement of steady-state entanglement should be observable under experimentally realistic conditions.
We analytically and numerically investigate the steady-state entanglement and coherence of two coupled qubits, each interacting with a local boson or fermion reservoir, based on the Bloch-Redfield master equation beyond the secular approximation. We find that there is nonvanishing steady-state coherence in the nonequilibrium scenario, which grows monotonically with the nonequilibrium condition quantified by the temperature difference or chemical potential difference of the two baths. The steady-state entanglement, in general, is a nonmonotonic function of the nonequilibrium condition as well as the bath parameters in the equilibrium setting. We also discover that weak interqubit coupling and high base temperature or chemical potential of the baths can strongly suppress the steady-state entanglement and coherence, regardless of the strength of the nonequilibrium condition. On the other hand, the energy detuning of the two qubits, when used in a compensatory way with the nonequilibrium condition, can lead to significant enhancement of the steady-state entanglement in some parameter regimes. In addition, the qubits typically have a stronger steady-state entanglement when coupled to fermion baths exchanging particles with the system than boson baths exchanging energy with the system, under similar conditions. We also identify a close connection between the energy current flowing through the system and the steady-state coherence. Preliminary investigations suggest that these results are insensitive to the form of the reservoir spectral densities in the Markovian regime. Feasible experimental realization of measuring the steady-state entanglement and coherence is discussed for the coupled qubit system in nonequilibrium environments. Our findings offer some general guidelines for optimizing the steady-state entanglement and coherence in the coupled qubit system and may find potential applications in quantum information technology.
We study the steady-state entanglement and heat current of two coupled qubits, in which two qubits are connected with two independent heat baths (IHBs) or two common heat baths (CHBs). We construct the master equation in the eigenstate representation of two coupled qubits to describe the dynamics of the total system and derive the solutions in the steady-state with stronger coupling regime between two qubits than qubit–baths. We do not make the rotating wave approximation (RWA) for the qubit–qubit interaction, and so we are able to investigate the behaviors of the system in both the strong coupling regime and the weak coupling regime, respectively. In an equilibrium bath, we find that the entanglement decreases with the bath temperature and energy detuning increasing under the strong coupling regime. In the weak coupling regime, the entanglement increases with coupling strength increasing and decreases with the bath temperature and energy detuning increasing. In a nonequilibrium bath, the entanglement without RWA is useful for entanglement at lower temperatures. We also study the heat currents of the two coupled qubits and their variations with the energy detuning, coupling strength and low temperature. In the strong (weak) coupling regime, the heat current increases (decreases) with coupling strength increasing when the temperature of one bath is lower (higher) than the other, and the energy detuning leads to a positive (negative) effect when the temperature is low (high). In the weak coupling regime, the variation trend of heat current is opposite to that of coupling strength for the IHB case and the CHB case.
Abstract We devise an autonomous quantum thermal machine consisting of three pairwise-interacting qubits, two of which are locally coupled to thermal reservoirs. The machine operates autonomously, as it requires no time-coherent control, external driving or quantum bath engineering, and is instead propelled by a chemical potential bias. Under ideal conditions, we show that this out-of-equilibrium system can deterministically generate a maximally entangled steady-state between two of the qubits, or any desired pure two-qubit entangled state, emerging as a dark state of the system. We study the robustness of entanglement production with respect to several relevant parameters, obtaining nearly-maximally-entangled states well-away from the ideal regime of operation. Furthermore, we show that our machine architecture can be generalised to a configuration with 2n − 1 qubits, in which only a potential bias and two-body interactions are sufficient to generate genuine multipartite maximally entangled steady states in the form of a W state of n qubits.