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Many optically active systems possess spatially asymmetric electron orbitals. These generate permanent dipole moments, which can be stronger than the corresponding transition dipole moments, significantly affecting the system dynamics and creating polarised Fock states of light. We derive a master equation for these systems by employing an optical polaron transformation that captures the photon mode polarisation induced by the permanent dipoles. This provides an intuitive framework to explore their influence on the system dynamics and emission spectrum. We find that permanent dipoles introduce multiple-photon processes and a photon sideband which causes substantial modifications to single-photon transition dipole processes. In the presence of an external drive, permanent dipoles lead to an additional process that we show can be exploited to optimise the decoherence and transition rates. We derive the emission spectrum of the system, highlighting experimentally detectable signatures of optical polarons, and measurements that can identify the parameters in the system Hamiltonian, the magnitude of the differences in the permanent dipoles, and the steady-state populations of the system., Comment: We have now included the dipolar self energy term in our Hamiltonian. Doing so cancelled out the internal drive of our Hamiltonian in the first version of this manuscript, and so we have now added an external drive. The net effect is that our results are mostly unchanged, but the source of the drive is different

In this article, we explore the dynamical decoherence of the chromophores within a green fluorescent protein when coupled to a finite-temperature dielectric environment. Such systems are of significant interest due to their anomalously long coherence lifetimes compared to other biomolecules. We work within the spin-boson model and employ the Hierarchical Equations of Motion formalism which allows for the accounting of the full non-perturbative and non-Markovian characteristics of the system dynamics. We analyse the level coherence of independent green fluorescent protein chromophores and the energy transfer dynamics in homo-dimer green fluorescent proteins, focusing on the effect of dielectric relaxation on the timescales of these systems. Using the Fluctuation-Dissipation theorem, we generate spectral densities from local electric susceptibility generated from Poisson's equation and employ a Debye dielectric model for the solvent environment. For different system architectures, we identify a number of very striking features in the dynamics of the chromophore induced by the dielectric relaxation of the environment, resulting in strong memory effects that extend the coherence lifetime of the system. Remarkably, the complex architecture of the green fluorescent protein, which includes a cavity-like structure around the atomic system, is well suited to preserving the coherences in the homo-dimer system. The system dynamics generate a dynamical correlation between the coherent energy transfer between its sub-systems and the entropy production, which can lead to transient reductions in entropy, a unique feature of the non-Markovian nature of the system-environment interaction.

In this article we employ a model open quantum system consisting of two-level atomic systems coupled to Lorentzian photonic cavities, as an instantiation of a quantum physical reservoir computer. We then deployed the quantum reservoir computing approach to an archetypal machine learning problem of image recognition. We contrast the effectiveness of the quantum physical reservoir computer against a conventional approach using neural network of the similar architecture with the quantum physical reservoir computer layer removed. Remarkably, as the data set size is increased the quantum physical reservoir computer quickly starts out perform the conventional neural network. Furthermore, quantum physical reservoir computer provides superior effectiveness against number of training epochs at a set data set size and outperformed the neural network approach at every epoch number sampled. Finally, we have deployed the quantum physical reservoir computer approach to explore the quantum problem associated with the dynamics of open quantum systems in which an atomic system ensemble interacts with a structured photonic reservoir associated with a photonic band gap material. Our results demonstrate that the quantum physical reservoir computer is equally effective in generating useful representations for quantum problems, even with limited training data size.

In this article we explore the dynamics of many-body atomic systems symmetrically coupled to a single Lorentzian photonic cavity. Our study reveals interesting dynamical characteristics including non-zero steady states, superradiant decay, enhanced energy transfer and the ability to modulate oscillations in the atomic system by tuning environmental degrees of freedom. We also analyse a configuration consisting of a three-atom chain embedded in a photonic cavity. Similarly, we find a strong enhancement of the energy transfer rate between the two ends of the chain and identified specific initial conditions that lead to significantly reduced dissipation between the two atoms at the end of the chain. Another configuration of interest consists of two symmetrical detuned reservoirs with respect to the atomic system. In the single-atom case, we show that it is possible to enhance the decay rate of the system by modulating its reservoir detuning, while in the many-atom case, this results in dynamics akin to the on-resonant cavity. Finally, we examine the validity of rotating wave approximation through a direct comparison against the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion approach. We find good agreement in the weak coupling regime while in the intermediate coupling regime, we identify qualitative similarities, but the rotating wave approximation becomes less reliable. In the moderate coupling regime, we find deviation of the steady states due to the formation of mixed photon atom states.

We explore the dynamics of $N$ coupled atoms to a generic bosonic reservoir under specific system symmetries. In the regime of multiple atoms coupled to a single reservoir with identical couplings, we identify remarkable effects, notably that the initial configuration of the atomic excited state amplitudes strongly impacts the dynamics of the system and can even fully sever the system from its environment. Additionally, we find that steady state amplitudes of the excited states become independent of the choice of the reservoir. The framework introduced is applied to a structured photonic reservoir associated with a photonic crystal, where we show it reproduces previous theoretical and experimental results and it predicts superradiant behaviour within the single-excitation regime.