Systematic time-coarse-graining for driven quantum systems

Abstract

Real-world experiments on quantum systems are always performed with measurement apparatus whose interaction times with the systems are finite. This restricts the observable quantum states to the space of time-coarse-grained density matrices ${\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}(t)}$, providing motivation for the time-coarse-graining (TCG) approach that solves for $\overline{\ensuremath{\rho}}(t)$ without ever referring to the unobservable $\ensuremath{\rho}(t)$ of infinite time resolution. Phenomenologically, this implies that coherent transitions far outside the bandwidth would be filtered out, leaving only their effective impacts on the ``slow'' dynamics resolvable by the finite time resolution of the measurements. Therefore, the TCG framework provides rigorous justification for many existing effective Hamiltonian methods in the literature that aim at capturing the unitary part of the long-time dynamics. However, since time-coarse-graining is fundamentally irreversible, the resulting effective model allows for secular loss of information and dissipation of energy in general, which cannot be captured by any unitary effective models and has to be treated with explicit time-coarse-graining. Such incoherent effects are particularly prominent in driven nonlinear quantum systems where exchange of information and energy with the drive gives rise to incoherent effective dynamics at all finite time resolutions in general. While rigorous in principle, existing TCG methods in the literature can be applied only to simple systems by one iteratively solving superoperator equations at low orders in the coupling strengths. The complexity of such methods prevents systematic study of the time-coarse-grained dynamics and limits analytical results to the IR (low-resolution) limit in most cases. We address these limitations in this paper, presenting a systematic time-coarse-graining method that overcomes the complexities and restrictions of current techniques, offering a comprehensive and accurate modeling framework for driven nonlinear quantum systems. We derive closed-form formulas as well as diagrammatic representations for both unitary and nonunitary contributions, in the form of an effective Hamiltonian and nonunitary dissipators at arbitrary order in the coupling strengths, and complement this with a computer-algebra software package. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method using several typical models of driven nonlinear systems in superconducting circuits, and show that it generalizes and improves on existing methods by providing more accurate results and explaining phenomena that have not been accounted for.