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We consider a specific instance of a superconducting circuit, the so-called charge-qubit, consisting of a capacitor and a Josephson junction. Starting from the microscopic description of the latter in terms of two tunneling BCS models in the strong-coupling quasi-spin formulation, we derive the Hamiltonian governing the quantum behavior of the circuit in the limit of a large number $N$ of quasi-spins. Our approach relies on the identification of suitable quantum fluctuations, i.e. of collective quasi-spin operators, which account for the presence of fluctuation operators in the superconducting phase that retain a quantum character in spite of the large-$N$ limit. We show indeed that these collective quantum fluctuations generate the Heisenberg algebra on the circle and that their dynamics reproduces the one of the quantized charge-qubit, without the need of a phenomenological ``third quantization'' of a semiclassically inspired model. As a byproduct of our derivation, we explicitly obtain the temperature dependence of the junction critical Josephson current in the strong coupling regime, a result which is not directly accessible using standard approximation techniques., Comment: 34 pages

In phenomenological applications, time evolutions of Bloch-Redfield type are widely adopted for modelling open system dynamics, despite their non-positive preserving character: this physical inconsistency, that in general shows up at small times, is usually cured by suitably restricting the space of allowed initial states. Nevertheless, additional problems may arise in relation to entanglement: specifically, we show that Redfield dynamics can generate entanglement through a purely local action, and this unphysical effect can persist for finite times., Comment: 17 pages, 1 fig, LaTex

We extend on ideas from standard thermodynamics to show that temperature can be assigned to a general nonequilibrium quantum system. By choosing a physically motivated complete set of observables and expanding the system state thereupon, one can read a set of relevant, independent thermodynamic variables which include internal energy. This expansion allows us to read a nonequilibrium temperature as the partial derivative of the von Neumann entropy with respect to internal energy. We show that this definition of temperature is one of a set of thermodynamics parameters unambiguously describing the system state. It has appealing features such as positivity for passive states and consistency with the standard temperature for thermal states. By attributing temperature to correlations in a bipartite system, we obtain a universal relation which connects the temperatures of subsystems, total system as a whole, and correlation. All these temperatures can be different even when the composite system is in a well-defined Gibbsian thermal state., Comment: 4+8 pages

For systems consisting of distinguishable particles, there exists an agreed upon notion of entanglement which is fundamentally based on the possibility of addressing individually each one of the constituent parties. Instead, the indistinguishability of identical particles hinders their individual addressability and has prompted diverse, sometimes discordant definitions of entanglement. In the present review, we provide a comparative analysis of the relevant existing approaches, which is based on the characterization of bipartite entanglement in terms of the behaviour of correlation functions. Such a a point of view provides a fairly general setting where to discuss the presence of non-local effects; it is performed in the light of the following general consistency criteria: i) entanglement corresponds to non-local correlations and cannot be generated by local operations; ii) when, by "freezing" suitable degrees of freedom, identical particles can be effectively distinguished, their entanglement must reduce to the one that holds for distinguishable particles; iii) in absence of other quantum resources, only entanglement can outperform classical information protocols. These three requests provide a setting that allows to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of the existing approaches to indistinguishable particle entanglement and to contribute to the current understanding of such a crucial issue. Indeed, they can be classified into five different classes: four hinging on the notion of particle and one based on that of physical modes. We show that only the latter approach is consistent with all three criteria, each of the others indeed violating at least one of them.

Quantum detailed balance conditions and quantum fluctuation relations are two important concepts in the dynamics of open quantum systems: both concern how such systems behave when they thermalize because of interaction with an environment. We prove that for thermalizing quantum dynamics the quantum detailed balance conditions yield the validity of a quantum fluctuation relation (where only forward-time dynamics is considered). This implies that to have such a quantum fluctuation relation (which in turn enables a precise formulation of the second law of thermodynamics for quantum systems) it suffices to fulfill the quantum detailed balance conditions. We, however, show that the converse is not necessarily true; indeed, there are cases of thermalizing dynamics which feature the quantum fluctuation relation without satisfying detailed balance. We illustrate our results with three examples., Comment: 9 Pages

Quantum-enhanced metrology is boosting interferometer sensitivities to extraordinary levels, up to the point where table-top experiments have been proposed to measure Planck-scale effects predicted by quantum gravity theories. In setups involving multiple photon interferometers, as those for measuring the so-called holographic fluctuations, entanglement provides substantial improvements in sensitivity. Entanglement is however a fragile resource and may be endangered by decoherence phenomena. We analyze how noisy effects arising either from the weak coupling to an external environment or from the modification of the canonical commutation relations in photon propagation may affect this entanglement enhanced gain in sensitivity., Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, LaTex

The semileptonic decay asymmetry $\mathcal{A}_{\Delta m}$ is studied within the open quantum systems approach to the physics of the neutral meson $B^0$-$\overline{B^0}$ system: this extended treatment takes into account possible non-standard, dissipative effects induced by the presence of an external environment. A bound on these effects is provided through the analysis of available experimental data from the Belle Collaboration., Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:hep-ph/0103239

We argue that in the case of identical particles the most natural identification of separability, that is of absence of non-classical correlations, is via the factorization of mean values of commuting observables. It thus follows that separability and entanglement depend both on the state and on the choice of observables and are not absolute notions. We compare this point of view with a recent novel approach to the entanglement of identical particles, which allows for the definition of an entanglement entropy from a suitably defined reduced particle density matrix, without the need of labeling the system constituents. We contrast this figure of merit with the aforementioned lack of an absolute notion of entanglement by considering few paradigmatic examples.

In the weak-coupling limit approach to open quantum systems, the presence of the bath is eliminated and accounted for by a master equation that introduces dissipative contributions to the system reduced dynamics. Within this framework, there are no bath entropy contributions to the entropy balance. We show that, as a consequence, the entropy production fails to be positive for a class of physically legitimate (i.e., completely positive and trace preserving) non-Markovian dynamical maps. Moreover, in the absence of the semigroup property, if the reduced dynamics has a thermal asymptotic state, this need not be stationary. In this case, even the integrated entropy production becomes negative. These observations imply that, when the conditions leading to reduced dynamics of semigroup type are relaxed, a consistent formulation of the second law of thermodynamics requires that the environment contribution to the entropy balance be explicitly taken into account., Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, accepted in Scientific Reports

Recent experimental results point to the existence of coherent quantum phenomena in systems made of a large number of particles, despite the fact that for many-body systems the presence of decoherence is hardly negligible and emerging classicality is expected. This behaviour hinges on collective observables, named quantum fluctuations, that retain a quantum character even in the thermodynamic limit: they provide useful tools for studying properties of many-body systems at the mesoscopic level, in between the quantum microscopic scale and the classical macroscopic one. We hereby present the general theory of quantum fluctuations in mesoscopic systems and study their dynamics in a quantum open system setting, taking into account the unavoidable effects of dissipation and noise induced by the external environment. As in the case of microscopic systems, decoherence is not always the only dominating effect at the mesoscopic scale: certain type of environments can provide means for entangling collective fluctuations through a purely noisy mechanism., Comment: 51 pages, LaTeX

We consider two chains, each made of $N$ independent oscillators, immersed in a common thermal bath and study the dynamics of their mutual quantum correlations in the thermodynamic, large-$N$ limit. We show that dissipation and noise due to the presence of the external environment are able to generate collective quantum correlations between the two chains at the mesoscopic level. The created collective quantum entanglement between the two many-body systems turns out to be rather robust, surviving for asymptotically long times even for non vanishing bath temperatures., Comment: LaTeX, 38 pages, 7 figures

We provide a characterization of energy in the form of exchanged heat and work between two interacting constituents of a closed, bipartite, correlated quantum system. By defining a binding energy we derive a consistent quantum formulation of the first law of thermodynamics, in which the role of correlations becomes evident, and this formulation reduces to the standard classical picture in relevant systems. We next discuss the emergence of the second law of thermodynamics under certain---but fairly general---conditions such as the Markovian assumption. We illustrate the role of correlations and interactions in thermodynamics through two examples., Comment: 16 pages

Many-body entanglement is studied within the algebraic approach to quantum physics in systems made of Majorana fermions. In this framework, the notion of separability stems from partitions of the algebra of observables and properties of the associated correlation functions, rather than on particle tensor products. This allows obtaining a complete characterization of non-separable Majorana fermion states. These results may find direct applications in quantum metrology: using Majorana systems, sub-shot noise accuracy in parameter estimations can be achieved without preliminary, resource consuming, state entanglement operations., Comment: 44 pages, LaTex

One way to look for complex behaviours in many-body quantum systems is to let the number $N$ of degrees of freedom become large and focus upon collective observables. Mean-field quantities scaling as $1/N$ tend to commute, whence complexity at the quantum level can only be inherited from complexity at the classical level. Instead, fluctuations of microscopic observables scale as $1/\sqrt{N}$ and exhibit collective Bosonic features, typical of a mesoscopic regime half-way between the quantum one at the microscopic level and the classical one at the level of macroscopic averages. Here, we consider the mesoscopic behaviour emerging from an infinite quantum spin chain undergoing a microscopic dissipative, irreversible dynamics and from global states without long-range correlations and invariant under lattice translations and dynamics. We show that, from the fluctuations of one site spin observables whose linear span is mapped into itself by the dynamics, there emerge bosonic operators obeying a mesoscopic dissipative dynamics mapping Gaussian states into Gaussian states. Instead of just depleting quantum correlations because of decoherence effects, these maps can generate entanglement at the collective, mesoscopic level, a phenomenon with no classical analogue that embodies a peculiar complex behaviour at the interface between micro and macro regimes., Comment: LaTex, 30 pages

Standard quantum state reconstruction techniques indicate that a detection efficiency of $0.5$ is an absolute threshold below which quantum interferences cannot be measured. However, alternative statistical techniques suggest that this threshold can be overcome at the price of increasing the statistics used for the reconstruction. In the following we present numerical experiments proving that quantum interferences can be measured even with a detection efficiency smaller than $0.5$. At the same time we provide a guideline for handling the tomographic reconstruction of quantum states based on homodyne data collected by low efficiency detectors.

While it is well known that complete positivity guarantees the fulfilment of the second law of thermodynamics, its possible violations have never been proposed as a check of the complete positivity of a given open quantum dynamics. We hereby consider an open quantum micro-circuit, effectively describable as a two-level open quantum system, whose asymptotic current might be experimentally accessible. This latter could indeed be used to discriminate between its possible non-completely positive Redfield dynamics and a completely positive one obtained by standard weak-coupling limit techniques, at the same time verifying the fate of the second law of thermodynamics in such a context., Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures, LaTex

We consider a recently proposed model of driven open quantum microcircuit [F. Pellegrini et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 060401 (2011)] amenable to experimental investigations. We show that such an open quantum system provides a concrete physical instance where to prove that modeling its time-evolution with a dynamics lacking complete positivity conflicts with the second law of thermodynamics., Comment: 6 pages, LaTex

In the case of systems composed of identical particles, a typical instance in quantum statistical mechanics, the standard approach to separability and entanglement ought to be reformulated and rephrased in terms of correlations between operators from subalgebras localized in spatially disjoint regions. While this algebraic approach is straightforward for bosons, in the case of fermions it is subtler since one has to distinguish between micro-causality, that is the anti-commutativity of the basic creation and annihilation operators, and algebraic independence that is the commutativity of local observables. We argue that a consistent algebraic formulation of separability and entanglement should be compatible with micro-causality rather than with algebraic independence., Comment: 10 pages, LaTex. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1403.1144

We show that two, non interacting, infinitely long spin chains can become globally entangled at the mesoscopic level of their fluctuation operators through a purely noisy microscopic mechanism induced by the presence of a common heat bath. By focusing on a suitable class of mesoscopic observables, the behaviour of the dissipatively generated quantum correlations between the two chains is studied as a function of the dissipation strength and bath temperature., Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX

Unlike for bipartite states consisting of distinguishable particles, in the case of identical parties the notion of entanglement is still under debate. In the following, we review two different approaches to the entanglement of systems consisting of two Bosons or Fermions; the first approach is based on the particle aspect typical of first quantization and identifies separable pure states as those that allow to assign two orthogonal single particle vector states to both parties. The second approach makes full use of the mode aspect of second quantization whereby separability can be formulated as absence of non-local correlation among two different sets of modes. While the first approach applies to pure states only, the second one is more general and characterizes generic entangled states. In the following, we shall show that the mode-based approach indeed contains the particle-based one., Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX

Entanglement in fermion many-body systems is studied using a generalized definition of separability based on partitions of the set of observables, rather than on particle tensor products. In this way, the characterizing properties of non-separable fermion states can be explicitly analyzed, allowing a precise description of the geometric structure of the corresponding state space. These results have direct applications in fermion quantum metrology: sub-shot noise accuracy in parameter estimation can be obtained without the need of a preliminary state entangling operation., Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX

Estimation of physical parameters is a must in almost any part of science and technology. The enhancement of the performances in this task, e.g., beating the standard classical shot-noise limit, using available physical resources is a major goal in metrology. Quantum metrology in closed systems has indicated that entanglement in such systems may be a useful resource. However, it is not yet fully understood whether in open quantum systems such enhancements may still show up. Here, we consider a dissipative (open) quantum system of identical particles in which a parameter of the open dynamics itself is to be estimated. We employ a recently-developed dissipative quantum metrology framework, and investigate whether the entanglement produced in the course of the dissipative dynamics may help the estimation task. Specifically, we show that even in a Markovian dynamics, in which states become less distinguishable in time, at small enough times entanglement generated by the dynamics may offer some advantage over the classical shot-noise limit., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures

The robustness properties of bipartite entanglement in systems of N bosons distributed in M different modes are analyzed using a definition of separability based on commuting algebras of observables, a natural choice when dealing with identical particles. Within this framework, expressions for the robustness and generalized robustness of entanglement can be explicitly given for large classes of boson states: their entanglement content results in general much more stable than that of distinguishable particles states. Using these results, the geometrical structure of the space of N boson states can be explicitly addressed., Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX

We study bipartite entanglement in systems of N identical bosons distributed in M different modes. For such systems, a definition of separability not related to any a priori Hilbert space tensor product structure is needed and can be given in terms of commuting subalgebras of observables. Using this generalized notion of separability, we classify the states for which partial transposition turns out to be a necessary and sufficient condition for entanglement detection., Comment: LaTeX, 22 pages

Quantum contextuality in systems of identical bosonic particles is explicitly exhibited via the maximum violation of a suitable inequality of Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt type. Unlike the approaches considered so far, which make use of single-particle observables, our analysis involves collective observables constructed using multi-boson operators. An exemplifying scheme to test this violation with a quantum optical setup is also discussed., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, LaTex

By identifying non-local effects in systems of identical Bosonic qubits through correlations of their commuting observables, we show that entanglement is not necessary to violate certain squeezing inequalities that hold for distinguishable qubits and that spin squeezing may not be necessary to achieve sub-shot noise accuracies in ultra-cold atom interferometry., Comment: 13 pages, LaTex

The usual notion of separability has to be reconsidered when applied to states describing identical particles. A definition of separability not related to any a priori Hilbert space tensor product structure is needed: this can be given in terms of commuting subalgebras of observables. Accordingly, the results concerning the use of the quantum Fisher information in quantum metrology are generalized and physically reinterpreted., Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX

The evolution of two, non-interacting two-level atoms immersed in a weakly coupled bath can be described by a refined, time coarse grained Markovian evolution, still preserving complete positivity. We find that this improved reduced dynamics is able to entangle the two atoms even when their internal frequencies are unequal, an effect which appears impossible in the standard weak coupling limit approach. We study in detail this phenomenon for an environment made of quantum fields., Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX

Two non-directly interacting qubits with equal frequencies can become entangled via a Markovian, dissipative dynamics through the action of a weakly coupled Ohmic heat bath. In the standard weak-coupling limit derivation, this purely dissipative effect disappears if the frequencies are different because of the "ergodic average" used by this approach. However, there are physical situations where this technique is too rough to capture all the relevant aspects of the dissipative dynamics. In these cases, in order to better describe the physical behavior of the open system, it is necessary to go beyond the "ergodic average". We show that, in this more refined framework, the entanglement capability of the environment persists also in the case of different frequencies., Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX

The density-density correlation profiles obtained superimposing absorption images from atomic clouds freely expanding after the release of the confining optical lattice can be theoretically described in terms of a generalized quantum measure based on coherent-like states. We show that the corresponding density patterns differ in a testable way from those computed using standard many-body mean values, usually adopted in fitting experimental data., Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages

We study the dynamics of ultracold atoms trapped in optical double-well potentials in presence of noise generated by an external environment. When prepared in a Fock number state, the system shows phase coherence in the averaged density profile obtained using standard absorption image techniques, that disappears in absence of noise. This effect indicates that also in many-body systems an external environment may enhance quantum coherence, instead of destroying it., Comment: 14 pages, LaTex

The standard experimental techniques usually adopted in the study of the behaviour of ultracold atoms in optical lattices involve extracting the atom density profile from absorption images of the atomic sample after trap release. Quantum mechanically this procedure is described by a generalized measure (POVM); interference patterns found in absorption images suggest a generalized measure based on fixed-phase, coherent-like states. We show that this leads to an average atomic density which differs from the usually adopted one, obtained as the expectation value of the atom density operator in the many-body state., Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX

We study the behaviour of charge oscillations in Superconducting Cooper Pair Boxes weakly interacting with an environment. We found that, due to the noise and dissipation induced by the environment, the stability properties of these nanodevices differ according to whether the charge oscillations are interpreted as an effect of macroscopic quantum coherence, or semiclassically in terms of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. More specifically, occupation number states, used in the quantum interpretation of the oscillations, are found to be much more unstable than coherent ones, typical of the semiclassical explanation., Comment: 12 pages, LaTex

We study the behavior of cold atoms trapped in optical double well potentials in presence of noise, either generated by an external environment or by the trap itself. We show that quite in general the noise can induce a current between the two wells even when tunneling between the two wells is highly suppressed (Mott insulator phase). An engineered environment could provide a test ground for the behavior of such a current., Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX

Non-positive, Markovian semigroups are sometimes used to describe the time evolution of subsystems immersed in an external environment. A widely adopted prescription to avoid the appearance of negative probabilities is to eliminate from the admissible initial conditions those density matrices that would not remain positive by the action of the semigroup dynamics. Using a continuous variable model, we show that this procedure leads to physical inconsistencies when two subsystems are considered and their initial state is entangled., Comment: 10 pages, LaTex

In phenomenological applications the time evolution of subsystems immersed in an external environment are sometimes described by Markovian semigroups of Redfield type that result non-positive: the appearence of negative probabilities is avoided by restricting the admissible initial conditions to those states that remain positive under the action of the dynamics. We show that this often adopted procedure may lead to physical inconsistencies in presence of entanglement., Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure

Non-positive Markov approximations are sometimes used to describe the dynamics of qubits in weak interaction with suitable environments; the appearance of negative probabilities is avoided by assuming that the transient regime eliminates from the possible initial conditions those qubit states which would otherwise be mapped out of the Bloch sphere by the subsequent Markovian time-evolution. By means of a simple model, we discuss some physical inconsistencies of this approach in relation to entanglement; in particular, we show that slipped non-positive reduced dynamics might create entanglement through a purely local action., Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, LaTex

We consider the propagation of polarized photons in optical fibers under the action of randomly generated noise. In such situation, the change in time of the photon polarization can be described by a quantum dynamical semigroup. We show that the hierarchy among the decay constants of the polarization density matrix elements as prescribed by complete positivity can be experimentally probed using standard laboratory set-ups., Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX

Two, non-interacting systems immersed in a common bath and evolving with a Markovian, completely positive dynamics can become initially entangled via a purely noisy mechanism. Remarkably, for certain, phenomenologically relevant environments, the quantum correlations can persist even in the asymptotic long-time regime., Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX

We consider two independent bosonic oscillators immersed in a common bath, evolving in time with a completely positive, markovian, quasi-free (Gaussian) reduced dynamics. We show that an initially separated Gaussian state can become entangled as a result of a purely noisy mechanism. In certain cases, the dissipative dynamics allows the persistence of these bath induced quantum correlations even in the asymptotic equilibrium state., Comment: 14 pages, plain-TeX

While the notion of chaos is well established for dynamical systems on manifolds, it is not so for dynamical systems over discrete spaces with $ N $ variables, as binary neural networks and cellular automata. The main difficulty is the choice of a suitable topology to study the limit $N\to\infty$. By embedding the discrete phase space into a Cantor set we provided a natural setting to define topological entropy and Lyapunov exponents through the concept of error-profile. We made explicit calculations both numerical and analytic for well known discrete dynamical models., Comment: 36 pages, 13 figures: minor text amendments in places, time running top to bottom in figures, to appear in J. Math. Phys

Two, non-interacting two-level atoms immersed in a common bath can become mutually entangled when evolving with a Markovian, completely positive dynamics. For an environment made of external quantum fields, this phenomenon can be studied in detail: one finds that entanglement production can be controlled by varying the bath temperature and the distance between the atoms. Remarkably, in certain circumstances, the quantum correlations can persist in the asymptotic long-time regime., Comment: 12 pages, to appear in J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Opt

We review the standard treatment of open quantum systems in relation to quantum entanglement, analyzing, in particular, the behaviour of bipartite systems immersed in a same environment. We first focus upon the notion of complete positivity, a physically motivated algebraic constraint on the quantum dynamics, in relation to quantum entanglement, i.e. the existence of statistical correlations which can not be accounted for by classical probability. We then study the entanglement power of heat baths versus their decohering properties, a topic of increasing importance in the framework of the fast developing fields of quantum information, communication and computation. The presentation is self contained and, through several examples, it offers a detailed survey of the physics and of the most relevant and used techniques relative to both quantum open system dynamics and quantum entanglement., Comment: LaTex, 77 pages

The entanglement-sharing properties of an infinite spin-chain are studied when the state of the chain is a pure, translation-invariant state with a matrix-product structure. We study the entanglement properties of such states by means of their finitely correlated structure. These states are recursively constructed by means of an auxiliary density matrix \rho on a matrix algebra B and a completely positive map E: A \otimes B -> B, where A is the spin 2\times 2 matrix algebra. General structural results for the infinite chain are therefore obtained by explicit calculations in (finite) matrix algebras. In particular, we study not only the entanglement shared by nearest-neighbours, but also, differently from previous works, the entanglement shared between connected regions of the spin-chain. This range of possible applications is illustrated and the maximal concurrence C=1/\sqrt{2} for the entanglement of connected regions can actually be reached., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, to be published in Eur.Phys.Lett

The generalized dynamics describing the propagation of neutrinos in randomly fluctuating media is analyzed: it takes into account matter-induced, decoherence phenomena that go beyond the standard MSW effect. A widely adopted density fluctuation pattern is found to be physically untenable: a more general model needs to be instead considered, leading to flavor changing effective neutrino-matter interactions. They induce new, dissipative effects that modify the neutrino oscillation pattern in a way amenable to a direct experimental analysis., Comment: 14 pages, plain-TeX

The master equation describing the completely positive time evolution of a uniformly accelerated two-level system in weak interaction with a scalar field in the Minkowski vacuum is derived and explicitly solved. It encodes the well known Unruh effect, leading to a purely thermal equilibrium state. This asymptotic state turns out to be entangled when the uniformly accelerating system is composed by two, independent two-level atoms., Comment: 24 pages, plain-TeX, no figures

We study dynamical semigroups of positive, but not completely positive maps on finite-dimensional bipartite systems and analyze properties of their generators in relation to non-decomposability and bound-entanglement. An example of non-decomposable semigroup leading to a 4x4-dimensional bound-entangled density matrix is explicitly obtained., Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX