All real quantum systems are open, and in particular in thefield of quantumoptics, the measurement process has always been a fundamental object of study.Naturally, simulating such systems and processes on computers is of great interest.In this thesis, dissipation of energy and the process of photodetectionis studied through numerical means. In particular, a new Monte Carlo methodfor solving master equations is presented and applied to the case of resonance fluorescence. It provides a great speedup for large times compared to methodspreviously presented.
All real quantum systems are open, and in particular in thefield of quantumoptics, the measurement process has always been a fundamental object of study.Naturally, simulating such systems and processes on computers is of great interest.In this thesis, dissipation of energy and the process of photodetectionis studied through numerical means. In particular, a new Monte Carlo methodfor solving master equations is presented and applied to the case of resonance fluorescence. It provides a great speedup for large times compared to methodspreviously presented.
Master equations are probably the most fundamental equations for anyone working in quantum optics in the presence of dissipation. In this context it is then incredibly useful to have efficient ways of coding and simulating such equations in the computer, and in this notes I try to introduce in a comprehensive way how do I do so, focusing on Matlab, but making it general enough so that it can be directly translated to any other language or software of choice. I inherited most of my methods from Juan José García-Ripoll (whose numerical abilities I cannot praise enough), changing them here and there to accommodate them to the way my (fairly limited) numerical brain works, and to connect them as much as possible to how I understand the theory behind them. At present, the notes focus on how to code master equations and find their steady state, but I hope soon I will be able to update them with time evolution methods, including how to deal with time-dependent master equations. During the last 4 years I've tested these methods in various different contexts, including circuit quantum electrodynamics, the laser problem, optical parametric oscillators, and optomechanical systems. Comments and (constructive) criticism are greatly welcome, and will be properly credited and acknowledged.
Open quantum systems have drawn attention over decades due to its applicability in the foundation of theoretical physics, e.g. statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics. The dynamics of open quantum systems has been described as separate entities from their surrounding environment that consists of a very large number of modes, somehow coupled to the mode of the system. Even though the exact solution of the dynamical behavior of the system is impossible to calculate, we obtain a tentative solution using the crucial Markov approximation. The input-output formalism of the quantum Langevin equation (QLE) has been considered as a useful tool which provides a semi-classical description of the dynamics of the system, whereas the master equation provides a complete picture of the dynamics of the system expressed in terms of density matrix. While studying the dynamics of nonlinear system/environment coupling using QLE, we see, for a small value of external field, that the steady state system field does not change much from the steady state field obtained in the absence of nonlinear dissipation. However, in a case where a stronger external field is applied, we see that the deviation becomes substantial from the solution of linear system. We also see that the nonlinear coupling introduces significant difference in the cavity fluctuation spectrum. The description, therefore, provides a potential explanation of parametric effects in terms of nonlinear dissipation phenomena associated with the nonlinear coupling. Even though the theories developed in the context of open quantum systems have proven to be powerful tools, they do not provide a satisfactory platform to be implemented on non-linear Hamiltonians. We often approximate it by linearizing over nonlinear steady state field amplitude, and therefore, the interesting effects are often overlooked. The limitation of the analytics provokes us to simulate open quantum dynamics numerically. The numerical method consists of transformation of the environmental degrees of freedom to a one-dimensional many-body chain, and the computational technique includes numerical diagonalization and renormalization process. The time-adaptive density matrix renormalisation group (t-DMRG) is known as one of the most powerful techniques for the simulation of strongly-correlated many-body quantum systems. In this thesis, along with the theoretical modeling, we implement DMRG numerical scheme for the simulation of canonical S/B model by mapping it to one-dimensional harmonic chain with nearest neighbor interactions, and use the method to investigate the dynamics of the free dissipative system. The thermalization of open quantum systems is also studied by generating minimally entangled typical thermal states (METTS) through imaginary time evolution, and real-time evolving an empty system in the presence of the thermal bath. Further, we simulate coherently driven free dissipative Kerr nonlinear system numerically using Euler's method by solving Heisenberg equation of motion and t-DMRG algorithm, and demonstrate how the numerical results are analogous to classical bistability. By comparing with analytics, we see that the DMRG numerics is analogous to the quantum-mechanical exact solution obtained by mapping the equation of motion of the density matrix of the system to a Fokker-Plank equation. The comparison between two different numerical techniques shows that the semi-classical Euler's method determines the dynamics of the system field of one among two coherent branches, whereas DMRG numerics gives the superposition of both of them. Hence, DMRG-determined time dynamics undergoes generating non-classical states. Our approach of dealing with nonlinearity represents an important contribution in the developments of technique to study the dynamical and steady-state behavior of open quantum systems, which is a fundamental aspect of quantum physics.
In this thesis a formalism for indistinguishable multi-level quantum emitters in quantum master equations is developed. The complexity of the approach scales only polynomially in the number of quantum emitters. Complexity here means the number of coupled equations or rather the dimension of the Liouville space. This approach opens new possibilities for calculating open quantum systems. The method is implemented in the PsiQuaSP library, which allows to setup and solve arbitrary master equations, in particular master equations with the reduced polyno-mial scaling. The introduced tools are utilized to study subradiance in the open Dicke model and various cQED lasers. One of the main current research goals in quantum optics and quantum information science is the generation and stabilization of quantum coherence between distinct quantum systems. These systems can for instance be photons or quantum emitters, qubits. From a theoretical stance the difficulty with these systems is that their complexity scales in general exponentially with the system size, like the number of quantum emitters. The reduced scaling of the formalism introduced in this thesis stems from the permutation symmetry of the indistinguishable emitters. The method is derived in the context of Lindblad quantum master equations. Lindblad quantum master equations for many identical multi-level systems have been used to study funda- mental quantum optical systems, such as lasing and laser like action, various phase transitions, optical bistability, cooperative resonance fluorescence, entanglement, quantum light generation, quantum to classical transitions, super- and subradiance etc. In most of these cases the single emitter, the many emitter and the weak correlation limit can be satisfactorily treated with existing techniques, such as direct integration, phase space methods or cluster expansion. However these techniques are not well suited for the few emitter case with strong correlations. The theory developed in this thesis allows to study all these systems for moderate numbers of quantum emitters and arbitrary correlation strengths, thus filling the gap left open by conventional methods. Even though the theory is developed around Lindblad quantum master equations it is not limited to this case – the requirement of indistinguishability is used to construct symmetrized Liouville space basis states and operators which can also be used to construct other master equations. In this thesis the general methodology for the polynomial scaling of the many emitter master equation is derived by two different approaches. Generalized permutation symmetric Liouville space states and operators are introduced that allow for the construction of arbitrary master equations and observables. These Liouville space states and operators are translated into a graphical representation that greatly facilitates their usage. This representation is found to have a close connection to Lie algebras as well as graph theory. The whole method is implemented in a general and modular way in a C++ library called PsiQuaSP, which allows to simulate arbitrary master equations based on a number state representation. The design of the library heavily relies on the introduced graphical representation, which greatly facilitates the setup of a simulation. The treatment of non-identical systems with PsiQuaSP is illustrated and further techniques for complexity reduction and computational speedup are discussed. These tools are applied to the two main cases of cQED lasers/spasers and super-, subradiance. In the latter case a new type of phase transition in the open Dicke model is predicted that leads to a deterministic generation of subradiant steady state coherences, with applications in quantum information science. Furthermore the interaction of quantum dots with the dissipative modes at metal interfaces is investigated in order to explain experimental findings.
This thesis is concerned with modelling the dynamics of open quantum systems in several different contexts. Of principal interest is the manner in which the environment can modify, or even dominate, a system’s quantum behaviour in order to facilitate the transport of energetic excitations. In the first research chapter, a time-local, non-Markovian quantum master equation is derived in a variationally defined reference frame, for networks of two-level systems coupled to bosonic environments. The predictions of this master equation are then compared with those derived using both weak-coupling and polaron approximations. The variational master equation is found to agree with these standard approaches in their regimes of validity, whilst interpolating between them in intermediate parameter regimes. The second research chapter focusses on the dynamics of a superconducting double quantum dot embedded in a resonant circuit. The device is considered in a regime where the ground state consists of a coherent spatial superposition of a single Cooper pair, which can be excited by a variety of interactions with the environment. The relevant transition rates are calculated and the processes responsible are identified. A numerical simulation of the system is then used to explain experimental data, and show that for certain parameters a significant fraction of excitations occur via absorption of photons from the environment. The final chapter considers a model for an olfactory receptor, in which odorant molecules are recognised by their vibrational modes. Electron transfer occurs in the receptor, dependent on the presence of a vibrational mode of the right frequency. A quantum master equation for the system is derived, and the resulting dynamics is compared to earlier semi-classical treatments. The behaviour of the receptor is found to be sensitive not only to the frequency of the vibrational mode, but also to the character of the surrounding environment. Increased dissipation on the odorant mode, as well as the presence of higher frequencies in the environment is found to improve the frequency resolution of the receptor.
Abstract This chapter introduces the fundamentals of the description of the quantum dynamics of open systems in terms of quantum master equations, together with its most important applications. Special emphasis is laid on the theory of completely positive quantum dynamical semigroups, which leads to the concept of a quantum Markov process. It discusses the relaxation to equilibrium and the multi-time structure of quantum Markov processes, as well as their irreversible nature which is characterized by an appropriate entropy functional. Microscopic derivations for various quantum master equations are presented, such as the quantum optical master equation and the master equation for quantum Brownian motion. As a further application, the master equation describing continuous measurements is derived and used to study the quantum Zeno effect. The chapter also contains a treatment of non-linear, mean field quantum master equations together with applications to laser theory and super-radiance.
Simulation of open quantum systems is undoubtedly critical to design of quantum devices and applications of quantum technologies since dynamics of open quantum systems cannot be solved analytically in general. However, the dimension of open quantum systems grows exponentially as the number of their subsystems increases or as involving complicated environments, which reduces the computational efficiency of the simulation. In this paper, we boost numerical simulation of master equations of open quantum systems from several aspects with which the total time and the occupied memory in the simulation are significantly reduced without losing precision. Our method can be applied to the simulation of non-Markovian quantum systems described by an augmented system model as well. We conduct numerical experiments on simulation of a non-Markovian spin chain. Compared with the algorithm in a well-known toolbox, QuTiP, our method can take 26.3% time and less memory under fair conditions.