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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Quantifying the evolution of mixed quantum states

Andrés Marchisio, Andrea Valdés-Hernández, Natalia Giovenale, Manuel Otero, A. P. Majtey

Published Mar 9, 2026• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract We present a measure of quantum evolution based on the degree of average distinguishability between the states visited by a quantum system over a given time interval. This measure generalizes the concept of ‘amount of evolution’ previously introduced for pure states, to arbitrary (mixed) states, thereby enabling the study of non-unitary dynamics in open quantum systems. For qubit systems, we establish fundamental relationships between the proposed evolution measure and state purity, deriving rigorous bounds for the evolution quantity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the proposed measure admits a natural interpretation in terms of the entanglement between the system and a purifying environment, in such a way that the evolution measure globally reflects the degree of variation of the system-environment entanglement. Finally, we illustrate the behavior of the evolution measure in qubit systems interacting with an environment under paradigmatic decoherence dynamics.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/ae4f3f

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Abstract We present a measure of quantum evolution based on the degree of average distinguishability between the states visited by a quantum system over a given time interval. This measure generalizes the concept of ‘amount of evolution’ previously introduced for pure states, to arbitrary (mixed) states, thereby enabling the study of non-unitary dynamics in open quantum systems. For qubit systems, we establish fundamental relationships between the proposed evolution measure and state purity, deriving rigorous bounds for the evolution quantity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the proposed measure admits a natural interpretation in terms of the entanglement between the system and a purifying environment, in such a way that the evolution measure globally reflects the degree of variation of the system-environment entanglement. Finally, we illustrate the behavior of the evolution measure in qubit systems interacting with an environment under paradigmatic decoherence dynamics.
We construct a general measure for the degree of non-Markovian behavior in open quantum systems. This measure is based on the trace distance which quantifies the distinguishability of quantum states. It represents a functional of the dynamical map describing the time evolution of physical states, and can be interpreted in terms of the information flow between the open system and its environment. The measure takes on nonzero values whenever there is a flow of information from the environment back to the open system, which is the key feature of non-Markovian dynamics.
We propose a qubit-environment entanglement measure which is tailored for evolutions that lead to pure dephasing of the qubit, such as are abundant in solid-state scenarios.The measure can be calculated directly form the density matrix without minimization of any kind.In fact, it does not require knowledge of the full density matrix and it is enough to know the initial qubit state and the states of the environment conditional on qubit pointer states.This yields a computational advantage over standard entanglement measures, which becomes large when there are no correlations between environmental components in the conditional environmental states.In contrast to all other measures of mixed-state entanglement, the measure has a straightforward physical interpretation directly linking the amount of information about the qubit state which is contained in the environment to the amount of qubit-environment entanglement.This allows for a direct extension of the pure-state interpretation of entanglement generated during pure dephasing to mixed states, even though pure-state conclusions about qubit decoherence are not transferable.
We explore various aspects of the quantum entanglement dynamics of systems of two, three and four qubits interacting with an environment at zero temperature in a non-Markovian regime, as described by the paradigmatic model recently studied by Bellomo et al (2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 99 160502). We consider important families of initial states for the alluded systems. The average, typical entanglement evolution associated with each of these families is determined, and its relation with the evolution of the global degree of mixedness of the multi-qubit system is explored. For three and four qubits we consider the family of initial states equivalent under local unitary transformations to the |GHZ⟩ and | W ⟩ states, and compare their average behavior with the average behavior exhibited by initial maximally entangled two-qubit states. Furthermore, in the case of two qubits, the evolution of other manifestations of entanglement, related to measurable quantities, is also investigated. In particular, we consider the Mintert–Buchleitner concurrence lower bound and an entanglement indicator based upon the violation of local uncertainty relations.
Decoherence of qubits is one main limitation in quantum information processing, where the qubits themselves can be mixed because of decoherence and additional decoherence may generated through interactions with a bath. Here, we present a complete study of qubit-environment entanglement in the case of interactions that lead to pure dephasing of the qubit by allowing the initial state of the qubit to be mixed, exceeding previous restrictions. We find that the criteria for separability that hold for pure initial states of the qubit are reduced to witness status. Yet, the evolution of the witnesses reflects the array of features that entanglement can exhibit in the mixed case but are forbidden in the pure-qubit case. Most notably, this includes sudden birth of entanglement as the initial phase of the evolution is typically separable. Moreover, there is a stark numerical advantage to the study of entanglement for large environments when using the witness rather than the traditional measures available. We include the study of entanglement generated between a spin qubit and a sparse spin environment to illustrate the peculiarities of the evolution of entanglement in this case, as well as to emphasize the level of reliability of the entanglement witness.
Knowledge of the relationships among different features of quantumness, like entanglement and state purity, is important from both fundamental and practical viewpoints. Yet, this issue remains little explored in dynamical contexts for open quantum systems. We address this problem by studying the dynamics of entanglement and purity for two-qubit systems using paradigmatic models of radiation-matter interaction, with a qubit being isolated from the environment (spectator configuration). We show the effects of the corresponding local quantum channels on an initial two-qubit pure entangled state in the concurrence–purity diagram and find the conditions which enable dynamical closed formulas of concurrence, used to quantify entanglement, as a function of purity. We finally discuss the usefulness of these relations in assessing entanglement and purity thresholds which allow noisy quantum teleportation. Our results provide new insights about how different properties of composite open quantum systems behave and relate each other during quantum evolutions.
In this chapter we shall deal with the quantum dynamics of an open system. By open quantum system we mean here a system which interacts with an environment (see Sec. 9.4): since we are not interested in the dynamics of the environment, we shall have to describe the evolution of the system in some “effective” way. In particular, if we consider only the evolution of the system, it will be non-unitary, and this will represent the subject of this chapter. As we know, Hamiltonian quantum dynamics is unitary and changes pure states into pure states. On the other hand, non-unitary dynamics changes an initially pure state into a mixture, which must be described by a density matrix (see Ch. 5). In the case of macroscopic systems, the coupling with the environment may be arbitrarily reduced and therefore its influence can be made correspondingly small (see Sec. 1.1). Microscopic systems, however, always couple to the environment and this coupling cannot be considered negligible. This is the reason why the quantum theory of open systems is one of the most important and fundamental chapters of quantum mechanics that, though born in quantum optics, has many implications in almost all fields of physics. The present chapter can be seen as a further development of the measurement theory (see Ch. 9), as open systems manifest a decoherent dynamics (see in particular Sec. 9.4).