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arXiv:quant-ph/0512210 · Physical Review A

Decoherence assisting a measurement-driven quantum evolution process

Luis Roa, G. A. Olivares-Rentería

Published Jun 19, 2006• 15 citations
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Abstract

We study the problem of driving an unknown initial mixed quantum state onto a known pure state without using unitary transformations. This can be achieved, in an efficient manner, with the help of sequential measurements on at least two unbiased bases. However here we found that, when the system is affected by a decoherence mechanism, only one observable is required in order to achieve the same goal. In this way the decoherence can assist the process. We show that, depending on the sort of decoherence, the process can converge faster or slower than the method implemented by means of two complementary observables.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.73.062327

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We study the problem of driving an unknown initial mixed quantum state onto a known pure state without using unitary transformations. This can be achieved, in an efficient manner, with the help of sequential measurements on at least two unbiased bases. However here we found that, when the system is affected by a decoherence mechanism, only one observable is required in order to achieve the same goal. In this way the decoherence can assist the process. We show that, depending on the sort of decoherence, the process can converge faster or slower than the method implemented by means of two complementary observables.
We study the problem of mapping an unknown mixed quantum state onto a known pure state without the use of unitary transformations. This is achieved with the help of sequential measurements of two noncommuting observables only. We show that the overall success probability is maximized in the case of measuring two observables whose eigenstates define mutually unbiased bases. We find that for this optimal case the success probability quickly converges to unity as the number of measurement processes increases and that it is almost independent of the initial state. In particular, we show that to guarantee a success probability close to one the number of consecutive measurements must be larger than the dimension of the Hilbert space. We connect these results to quantum copying, quantum deleting, and entanglement generation.
We study the problem of driving a known initial quantum state onto a known pure state without using a unitary evolution. This task can be achieved by means of von Neumann measurement processes, introducing N observables which are consecutively measured in order to approach the state of the system to the target state. We proved that the probability of projecting onto the target state can be increased meaningfully by adding suitable observables to the process, that is, it converges to 1 when N increases. We also discuss a physical implementation of this scheme.
In this article we review two ways of driving a quantum system to a known pure state via a sequence discrete of von Neumann measurements. The first of them assumes that the initial state of the system is unknown, and the evolution is attained only with the help of two non-commuting observables. For this method, the overall success probability is maximized when the eigentstates of the involved observables constitute mutually unbiased bases. The second method assumes the initial state is known and it uses N observables which are consecutively measured to make the state of the system approach the target state. The probability of success of this procedure converges to 1 as the number of observables increases.
We study the problem of driving a known initial quantum state onto a known pure state without resorting to unitary transformations. This task can be achieved by means of a discrete sequence of von Neumann measurements only, introducing NNN observables which are consecutively measured in order to make the state of the system approach the target state. We show that the probability of projecting onto the target state can be increased meaningfully by adding suitable observables to the process, that is, it converges to 1 when NNN increases. These observables depend on the initial state and on the target state. We compare this scheme with one for which the initial state is not known [see L. Roa et al., Phys. Rev. A 73, 012322 (2006)]. This comparison shows that the knowledge of the initial density operator does not always increase the probability of success.
Dissipation and decoherence, and the evolution from pure to mixed states in quantum physics, are handled through master equations for the density matrix. Master equations such as the Lindblad equation preserve the trace of this matrix. Viewing them as first-order time-dependent operator equations for the elements of the density matrix, a unitary integration procedure can be adapted to solve for these elements. A simple model for decoherence preserves the Hermiticity of the density matrix. A single, classical Riccati equation is the only one requiring numerical handling to obtain a full solution of the quantum evolution. The procedure is general, valid for any number of levels, but is illustrated here for a three-level system with two driving fields. For various choices of the initial state, we study the evolution of the system as a function of the amplitudes, relative frequencies, and phases of the driven fields and of the strength of the decoherence. The monotonic growth of the entropy is followed as the system evolves from a pure to a mixed state. An example is provided by the n=3n=3n=3 states of the hydrogen atom in a time-dependent electric field, such degenerate manifolds affording an analytical solution.
Abstract A common objective for quantum control is to force a quantum system, initially in an unknown state, into a particular target subspace. We show that if the subspace is required to be a decoherence-free subspace of dimension greater than 1, then such control must be decoherent. That is, it will take almost any pure state to a mixed state. We make no assumptions about the control mechanism, but our result implies that for this purpose coherent control offers no advantage, in principle, over the obvious measurement-based feedback protocol.