Quantum-state transfer via resonant tunneling through local-field-induced barriers
Efficient quantum-state transfer is achieved in a uniformly coupled spin-1/2 chain, with open boundaries, by application of local magnetic fields on the second and last-but-one spins, respectively. These effective barriers induce the appearance of two eigenstates, bilocalized at the edges of the chain, which allow a high-quality transfer also at relatively long distances. The same mechanism may be used to send an entire e-bit (e.g., an entangled qubit pair) from one to the other end of the chain. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.87.042313
Macroscopic entanglement in Josephson nanocircuits
We propose a scheme to generate and detect entanglement between charge states in superconducting nanocircuits. We discuss different procedures to discriminate such entanglement from classical correlations. The case of maximally entangled states of two and three coupled Josephson junctions is discussed as example.
The role of environmental correlations in the non-Markovian dynamics of a spin system
We put forward a framework to study the dynamics of a chain of interacting quantum particles affected by individual or collective multi-mode environment, focussing on the role played by the environmental quantum correlations over the evolution of the chain. The presence of entanglement in the state of the environmental system magnifies the non-Markovian nature of the chain's dynamics, giving rise to structures in figures of merit such as entanglement and purity that are not observed under a separable multi-mode environment. Our analysis can be relevant to problems tackling the open-system dynamics of biological complexes of strong current interest.
Shot noise for resonant Cooper pair tunneling
We study intrinsic noise of current in a superconducting single-electron transistor, taking into account both coherence effects and Coulomb interaction near a Cooper-pair resonance. Due to this interplay, the statistics of tunneling events deviates from the Poisson distribution and, more important, it shows even-odd asymmetry in the transmitted charge. The zero-frequency noise is suppressed significantly when the quasiparticle tunneling rates are comparable to the coherent oscillation frequency of Cooper pairs.
Competition between memory-keeping and memory-erasing decoherence channels
We study the competing effects of simultaneous Markovian and non-Markovian decoherence mechanisms acting on a single spin. We show the existence of a threshold in the relative strength of such mechanisms above which the spin dynamics becomes fully Markovian, as revealed by the use of several non-Markovianity measures. We identify a measure-dependent nested structure of such thresholds, hinting at a causality relationship among the various non-Markovianity witnesses used in our analysis. Our considerations are then used to argue the unavoidably non-Markovian evolution of a single-electron quantum dot exposed to both intrinsic and Markovian technical noise, the latter of arbitrary strength.
Transport of Quantum Correlations across a spin chain
Some of the recent developments concerning the propagation of quantum correlations across spin channels are reviewed. In particular, we focus on the improvement of the transport efficiency obtained by the manipulation of few energy parameters (either end-bond strengths or local magnetic fields) near the sending and receiving sites. We give a physically insightful description of various such schemes and discuss the transfer of both entanglement and of quantum discord.
Universal scaling for the quantum Ising chain with a classical impurity
We study finite size scaling for the magnetic observables of an impurity residing at the endpoint of an open quantum Ising chain in a transverse magnetic field, realized by locally rescaling the magnetic field by a factor $\mu \neq 1$. In the homogeneous chain limit at $\mu = 1$, we find the expected finite size scaling for the longitudinal impurity magnetization, with no specific scaling for the transverse magnetization. At variance, in the classical impurity limit, $\mu = 0$, we recover finite scaling for the longitudinal magnetization, while the transverse one basically does not scale. For this case, we provide both analytic approximate expressions for the magnetization and the susceptib…
Quantum Critical Scaling under Periodic Driving
Universality is key to the theory of phase transition stating that the equilibrium properties of observables near a phase transition can be classified according to few critical exponents. These exponents rule an universal scaling behaviour that witnesses the irrelevance of the model's microscopic details at criticality. Here we discuss the persistence of such a scaling in a one-dimensional quantum Ising model under sinusoidal modulation in time of its transverse magnetic field. We show that scaling of various quantities (concurrence, entanglement entropy, magnetic and fidelity susceptibility) endures up to a stroboscopic time $\tau_{bd}$, proportional to the size of the system. This behavio…
Orthogonality Catastrophe and Decoherence in a Trapped-Fermion Environment
The Fermi edge singularity and the Anderson orthogonality catastrophe describe the universal physics which occurs when a Fermi sea is locally quenched by the sudden switching of a scattering potential, leading to a brutal disturbance of its ground state. We demonstrate that the effect can be seen in the controllable domain of ultracold trapped gases by providing an analytic description of the out-of-equilibrium response to an atomic impurity, both at zero and at finite temperature. Furthermore, we link the transient behavior of the gas to the decoherence of the impurity, and, in particular to the amount of non-markovianity of its dynamics.
Entanglement detection in Josephson nanocircuits
We describe a possible experimental scheme to generate and detect entanglement between charge states in superconducting nanocircuits, discriminating such entanglement from classical correlations. The case of maximally entangled singlet and GHZ states of two and three coupled Josephson junctions is discussed as an example.
Local Quench, Majorana Zero Modes, and Disturbance Propagation in the Ising chain
We study the generation and propagation of local perturbations in a quantum many-body spin system. In particular, we study the Ising model in transverse field in the presence of a local field defect at one edge. This system possesses a rich phase diagram with different regions characterized by the presence of one or two Majorana zero modes. We show that their localized character {\it i}) enables a characterization of the Ising phase transition through a local-only measurement performed on the edge spin, and {\it ii}) strongly affects the propagation of quasiparticles emitted after the sudden removal of the defect, so that the dynamics of the local magnetization show clear deviations from a …
Geometrical characterization of non-Markovianity
We introduce a new tool for the quantitative characterisation of the departure form Markovianity of a given dynamical process. Our tool can be applied to a generic $N$-level system and extended straightforwardly to Gaussian continuous-variable systems. It is linked to the change of the volume of physical states that are dynamically accessible to a system and provides qualitative expectations in agreement with some of the analogous tools proposed so far. We illustrate its prediticve power by tackling a few canonical examples.
Variational Gibbs State Preparation on NISQ devices
The preparation of an equilibrium thermal state of a quantum many-body system on noisy intermediate-scale (NISQ) devices is an important task in order to extend the range of applications of quantum computation. Faithful Gibbs state preparation would pave the way to investigate protocols such as thermalization and out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics, as well as providing useful resources for quantum algorithms, where sampling from Gibbs states constitutes a key subroutine. We propose a variational quantum algorithm (VQA) to prepare Gibbs states of a quantum many-body system. The novelty of our VQA consists in implementing a parameterized quantum circuit acting on two distinct, yet connected, q…
Decoherence in a fermion environment: Non-Markovianity and Orthogonality Catastrophe
We analyze the non-Markovian character of the dynamics of an open two-level atom interacting with a gas of ultra-cold fermions. In particular, we discuss the connection between the phenomena of orthogonality catastrophe and Fermi edge singularity occurring in such a kind of environment and the memory-keeping effects which are displayed in the time evolution of the open system.
Scaling of Berry's phase close to the Dicke quantum phase transition
We discuss the thermodynamic and finite size scaling properties of the geometric phase in the adiabatic Dicke model, describing the super-radiant phase transition for an $N$ qubit register coupled to a slow oscillator mode. We show that, in the thermodynamic limit, a non zero Berry phase is obtained only if a path in parameter space is followed that encircles the critical point. Furthermore, we investigate the precursors of this critical behavior for a system with finite size and obtain the leading order in the 1/N expansion of the Berry phase and its critical exponent.
Transfer of arbitrary two-qubit states via a spin chain
We investigate the fidelity of the quantum state transfer (QST) of two qubits by means of an arbitrary spin-1/2 network, on a lattice of any dimensionality. Under the assumptions that the network Hamiltonian preserves the magnetization and that a fully polarized initial state is taken for the lattice, we obtain a general formula for the average fidelity of the two qubits QST, linking it to the one- and two-particle transfer amplitudes of the spin-excitations among the sites of the lattice. We then apply this formalism to a 1D spin chain with XX-Heisenberg type nearest-neighbour interactions adopting a protocol that is a generalization of the single qubit one proposed in Ref. [Phys. Rev. A 8…
Dynamics of entanglement in one-dimensional spin systems
We study the dynamics of quantum correlations in a class of exactly solvable Ising-type models. We analyze in particular the time evolution of initial Bell states created in a fully polarized background and on the ground state. We find that the pairwise entanglement propagates with a velocity proportional to the reduced interaction for all the four Bell states. Singlet-like states are favored during the propagation, in the sense that triplet-like states change their character during the propagation under certain circumstances. Characteristic for the anisotropic models is the instantaneous creation of pairwise entanglement from a fully polarized state; furthermore, the propagation of pairwis…
Many-qubit quantum state transfer via spin chains
The transfer of an unknown quantum state, from a sender to a receiver, is one of the main requirements to perform quantum information processing tasks. In this respect, the state transfer of a single qubit by means of spin chains has been widely discussed, and many protocols aiming at performing this task have been proposed. Nevertheless, the state transfer of more than one qubit has not been properly addressed so far. In this paper, we present a modified version of a recently proposed quantum state transfer protocol [Phys. Rev. A 87, 062309 (2013)] to obtain a quantum channel for the transfer of two qubits. This goal is achieved by exploiting Rabi-like oscillations due to excitations induc…
Routing quantum information in spin chains
Two different models for performing efficiently routing of a quantum state are presented. Both cases involve an XX spin chain working as data bus and additional spins that play the role of sender and receivers, one of which is selected to be the target of the quantum state transmission protocol via a coherent quantum coupling mechanism making use of local/global magnetic fields. Quantum routing is achieved, in the first of the models considered, by weakly coupling the sender and the receiver to the data bus. In the second model, strong magnetic fields acting on additional spins located between the sender/receiver and the data bus allow us to perform high fidelity routing.
Universal scaling of a classical impurity in the quantum Ising chain
We study finite size scaling for the magnetic observables of an impurity residing at the endpoint of an open quantum Ising chain in a transverse magnetic field, realized by locally rescaling the magnetic field by a factor $\mu \neq 1$. In the homogeneous chain limit at $\mu = 1$, we find the expected finite size scaling for the longitudinal impurity magnetization, with no specific scaling for the transverse magnetization. At variance, in the classical impurity limit, $\mu = 0$, we recover finite scaling for the longitudinal magnetization, while the transverse one basically does not scale. For this case, we provide both analytic approximate expressions for the magnetization and the susceptib…
Tuning non-Markovianity by spin-dynamics control
We study the interplay between forgetful and memory-keeping evolution enforced on a two-level system by a multi-spin environment whose elements are coupled to local bosonic baths. Contrarily to the expectation that any non-Markovian effect would be buried by the forgetful mechanism induced by the spin-bath coupling, one can actually induce a full Markovian-to-non-Markovian transition of the two-level system's dynamics, controllable by parameters such as the mismatch between the energy of the two-level system and of the spin environment. For a symmetric coupling, the amount of non-Markovianity surprisingly grows with the number of decoherence channels.