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We investigated the optimal control of a continuous variable system, focusing on entanglement generation in an optomechanical system without utilizing Fock basis cutoffs. Using the Krotov algorithm to optimize the dynamics of the covariance matrix, we illustrated how to design a control objective function to manipulate the dynamics of the system to generate a desirable target state. We showed that entanglement between the macroscopic mechanical mirror and the quantum optical cavity can be reliably generated through imposing the control on the detuning of the external laser field. It has be shown that the control may be still achieved when imposing spectral constraints on the external field to restrict it to low-frequency components. In addition, we systematically studies the effects of quantum control on non-Markovian open system dynamics. We observed that memory effects can play a beneficial role in mitigating the detrimental impact of environmental noises. Specifically, the entanglement generated shows reduced decay in the presence of these memory effects., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures

We consider the Jaynes-Cummings (JC) model embedded in a structured environment, where the atom inside an optical cavity will be affected by a hierarchical environment consisting of the cavity and its environment. We propose several effective strategies to control and suppress the decoherence effects to protect the quantum coherence of the JC atom. We study the non-perturbative control of the system dynamics by means of the leakage elimination operators. We also investigate a full quantum state reversal scheme by engineering the system and its coupling to the bath via the Petz recovery map. Our findings conclude that, with the Petz recovery map, the dynamics of the JC atom can be fully recovered regardless of Markov or non-Markovian noises. Finally, we show that our quantum control and recovery methods are effective at protecting different aspects of the system coherence., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

We propose a protocol to overcome the shot noise limit and reach the Heisenberg scaling limit for parameter estimation by using quantum optimal control and a time-reversal strategy. Exemplified through the phase estimation, which can play an important role in quantum navigation and measurement, we show that the uncertainty arising from a photon number measurement of the system can saturate the assisted Cream\'er-Rao bound, independent of the phase being estimated. In a realistic case with photon loss, we show that the optimal estimation may still be attainable by optimal control and a projective measurement on an ancilla two-level system coupled to photonic modes., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

Non-Markovian effects of an open system dynamics are typically characterized by non-monotonic information flows from the system to its environment or information backflows from the environment to the system. By using a two-level system (TLS) coupled to a dissipative single-mode cavity, we show that the geometric decoherence of the open quantum system of interest can serve as a reliable witness of non-Markovian dynamics. This geometric approach can also reveal the finer details about the dynamics such as the time points where the non-Markovian behaviors come into operation. Specifically, we show that the divergence of the geometric decoherence factor of the TLS can be a sufficient condition for the non-Markovian dynamics. Remarkably, it can even become a necessary and sufficient condition in certain cases., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

We study the remote entanglement generation between macroscopic microwave magnon modes in a coupled cavity system. The cavities are connected via an optical fiber, which necessitates the use of a frequency conversion inside the cavity. The converter may be implemented via a rare-earth doped crystal acting like an effective three-level system. The entanglement dynamics of the system is analytically studied, and an active optimal control method is also proposed where one may generate maximally entangled Bell states on demand with a given evolution time. The system dynamics and its control have also been studied in a generic non-Markovian open system framework, and the generated entanglement is found to be robust against environmental noises., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures

Recent experiments show the existence of collective decoherence in quantum systems. We study the possibility of quantum computation in decoherence free subspace which is robust against such kind of decoherence processes. This passive protection protocol can be especially advantageous for continuous quantum computation such as quantum annealers. As an example we propose to use decoherence protected adiabatic quantum computation for the Grover search problem. Our proposal contains only two-body interactions, making it feasible in near-term quantum devices.

We consider the quantum state control of a multi-state system which evolves an initial state into a target state. We explicitly demonstrate the control method in an interesting case involving the transfer and rotation of a Schr\"{o}dinger cat state through a coupled harmonic oscillator chain at a predetermined time $T$. We use the gradient-based Krotov's method to design the time-dependent parameters of the coupled chain to find an optimal control shape that will evolve the system into a target state. We show that the prescribed quantum state control can be achieved with high fidelity, and the robustness of the control against generic environment noises is explored. Our findings will be of interest for the optimal control of a many-body open quantum system in the presence of environmental noise., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures

We propose and analyze a nonunitary variant of the continuous time Grover search algorithm based on frequent Zeno-type measurements. We show that the algorithm scales similarly to the pure quantum version by deriving tight analytical lower bounds on its efficiency for arbitrary database sizes and measurement parameters. We also study the behavior of the algorithm subject to noise, and find that under certain oracle and operational errors our measurement-based algorithm outperforms the standard algorithm, showing robustness against these noises. Our analysis is based on deriving a non-hermitian effective description of the algorithm, which yields a deeper insight into components responsible for the quantum and the classical operation of the protocol.

We investigate dynamical generation of macroscopic nonlocal entanglements between two remote massive magnon-superconducting-circuit hybrid systems. Two fiber-coupled microwave cavities are employed to serve as an interaction channel connecting two sets of macroscopic hybrid units each containing a magnon (hosted by a Yttrium-Iron-Garnet sphere) and a superconducting-circuit qubit. Surprisingly, it is found that stronger coupling does not necessarily mean faster entanglement generation. The proposed hybrid system allows the existence of an optimal fiber coupling strength that requests the shortest amount of time to generate a systematic maximal entanglement. Our theoretical results are shown to be within the scope of specific parameters that can be achieved with current technology. The noise effects on the implementation of systems are also treated in a general environment suggesting the robustness of entanglement generation. Our discrete-variable qubit-like entanglement theory of magnons may lead to direct applications in various quantum information tasks., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

The evolution of a quantum system towards thermal equilibrium is usually studied by approximate methods, which have their limits of validity and should be checked against analytically solvable models. In this paper, we propose an analytically solvable model to investigate the energy transfer between a bosonic bath and a fermionic chain which are nonlinearly-coupled to each other. The bosonic bath consists of an infinite collection of non-interacting bosonic modes, while the fermionic chain is represented by a chain of interacting fermions with nearest-neighbor interactions. We compare behaviors of the temperature-dependent energy current $J_{T}$ and temperature-independent energy current $J_{TI}$ for different bath configurations. With respect to the bath spectrum, $J_{T}$ decays exponentially for Lorentz-Drude type bath, which is the same as the conventional approximations. On the other hand, the decay rate is $1/t^{3}$ for Ohmic type and $1/t$ for white noise, which doesn't have conventional counterparts. For the temperature-independent current $J_{TI}$, the decay rate is divergent for the Lorentz-Drude type bath, $1/t^{4}$ for the Ohmic bath, and $1/t$ for the white noise. When further considering the dynamics of the fermionic chain, the current will be modulated based on the envelope from the bath. As an example, for a bosonic bath with Ohmic spectrum, when the fermionic chain is uniformly-coupled, we have $J_{T}\propto1/t^{6}$ and $J_{TI}\propto1/t^{3}$. Remarkably, for perfect state transfer (PST) couplings, there always exists an oscillating quantum energy current $J_{TI}$. Moreover, it is interesting that $J_{T}$ is proportional to $(N-1)^{1/2}$ at certain times for PST couplings under Lorentz-Drude or Ohmic bath., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figures

Based on a generic quantum open system model, we study the geometric nature of decoherence by defining a complex-valued geometric phase through stochastic pure states describing non-unitary, non-cyclic and non-adiabatic evolutions. The ensemble average of the complex geometric phases for the pure stochastic states yields a conventional geometric phase together with an amplitude factor. We show that the decoherence process described by the decaying amplitude can be a geometric quantity independent of the system's dynamics. It is a remarkable fact that the geometric phase of a quantum system can serve as an ideal realisation of quantum gates due to its robustness against dynamical errors, however, in this paper we show that, for some open quantum systems, a desirable geometric phase may be accompanied by an unwanted robust geometric decoherence factor. Two exactly solvable models are studied to demonstrate that, while the decoherence is a purely dynamical effect for a dephasing two-level model, the decoherence in a dissipative two-level model can be a geometric process. Finally, we show that such a geometric decoherence effect may be eliminated by a non-perturbative control scheme., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Geometric phases have been shown to be feasible in implementing quantum gates to perform quantum information processing. For all the realistic applications, the environmental influence on the geometric phase and decoherence such as memory effects must be properly considered in order to achieve the required precision in geometric quantum computation. In this paper, we study the geometric phase for a generic open quantum system based on a microscopic model. A remarkable feature of the open system's geometric phase obtained from our theoretical formulation is that the geometric phase can be obtained regardless of the existence of the master equations, while the environmental noise features such as memory effects are fully accounted for. We demonstrate that the geometric phases for a general open quantum system can be fundamentally modified by its non-Markovian environments., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

Over the last decades, there have been many proposals for quantum computation. One of the promising candidates is adiabatic quantum computation (AQC). The central idea of AQC is about finding the ground state of a system with a problem Hamiltonian via particular adiabatic passages, starting from an initialized ground state of a simple Hamiltonian. One disadvantage of AQC is the significant growth of necessary runtime, in particular when there are quantum phase transitions during the AQC passages. Here we propose a nondeterministic ground state cooling quantum computation model based on selective projection measurements on an ancilla coupled to the system with the problem Hamiltonian previously cooled by conventional techniques. We illustrate the model by Grover search problem and show that our nondeterministic model requires a constant or at most logarithmic runtime and can also get rid of possible difficulties in preparing the ground state of the simple Hamiltonian.

We propose a scheme for engineering compressed spatial states in a two-dimensional parabolic potential with a spin-orbit coupling by selective spin measurements. This sequence of measurements results in a coordinate-dependent density matrix with probability maxima achieved at a set of lines or at a two dimensional lattice. The resultant probability density depends on the spin-orbit coupling and the potential parameters and allows one to obtain a broad class of localized pure states on demand. The proposed scheme can be realized in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates.

We use an alternative method to investigate the quantum criticality at zero and finite temperature using trace distance along with the density matrix renormalization group. It is shown that the average correlation measured by the trace distance between the system block and environment block in a DMRG sweep is able to detect the critical points of quantum phase transitions at finite temperature. As illustrative examples, we study spin-1 XXZ chains with uniaxial single-ion-type anisotropy and the Heisenberg spin chain with staggered coupling and external magnetic field. It is found that the trace distance shows discontinuity at the critical points of quantum phase transition and can be used as an indicator of QPTs., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

We use an alternative approach to study the quantum phase transition in a coupled cavity lattice at finite temperature. As an illustrative example, we investigate the behaviors of the trace distance and quantum phase transition in a Jaynes-Cummings lattice at finite temperature. It is found that the trace distance can be used to describe the critical point of the quantum phase transition at finite low temperatures and the critical points are sensitive to the atom-field interaction strength and the detuning factor. For non-equilibrium states, we demonstrate that the time evolution of the trace distance's maximum value is also a good indicator of the critical points. Moreover, we show that the scaling behavior of derivative of the trace distance at the critical points and the scaling rule are dependent on the external parameters of the Hamiltonian., Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures

Keeping a quantum system in a given instantaneous eigenstate is a control problem with numerous applications, e.g., in quantum information processing. The problem is even more challenging in the setting of open quantum systems, where environment-mediated transitions introduce additional decoherence channels. Adiabatic passage is a well established solution, but requires a sufficiently slow evolution time that is dictated by the adiabatic theorem. Here we develop a systematic projection theory formulation for the transitionless evolution of general open quantum systems described by time-local master equations. We derive a time-convolutionless dynamical equation for the target instantaneous eigenstate of a given time-dependent Hamiltonian. A transitionless dynamics then arises in terms of a competition between the average Hamiltonian gap and the decoherence rate, which implies optimal adiabaticity timescales. We show how eigenstate tracking can be accomplished via control pulses, without explicitly incorporating counter-diabatic driving, thus offering an alternative route to shortcuts to adiabaticity. We examine rectangular pulses, chaotic signals, and white noise, and find that, remarkably, the effectiveness of eigenstate tracking hardly depends on the details of the control functions. In all cases the control protocol keeps the system in the desired instantaneous eigenstate throughout the entire evolution, along an accelerated adiabatic path., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures

We provide an alternative approach to relativistic dynamics based on the Feshbach projection technique. Instead of directly studying the Dirac equation, we derive a two-component equation for the upper spinor. This approach allows one to investigate the underlying physics in a different perspective. For particles with small mass such as the neutrino, the leading order equation has a Hermitian effective Hamiltonian, implying there is no leakage between the upper and lower spinors. In the weak relativistic regime, the leading order corresponds to a non-Hermitian correction to the Pauli equation, which takes into account the non-zero possibility of finding the lower-spinor state and offers a more precise description.

We propose an analog quantum simulator that uses ion traps to realize the many-body electron-electron Coulomb interaction of an electron gas. This proposal maps a system that is difficult to solve and control to an experimentally-feasible setup that can be realized with current technologies. Using a dilatation transform, we show that ion traps can efficiently simulate electronic Coulomb interactions. No complexity overhead is added if only the energy spectrum is desired, and only a simple unitary transform is needed on the initial state otherwise. The runtime of the simulation is found to be much shorter than the timescale of the corresponding electronic system, minimizing susceptibility of the proposed quantum simulator to external noise and decoherence. This proposal works in any number of dimensions, and could be used to simulate different topological phases of electrons in graphene-like structures, by using ions trapped in honeycomb lattices.

We find dynamical invariants for open quantum systems described by the non-Markovian quantum state diffusion (QSD) equation. In stark contrast to closed systems where the dynamical invariant can be identical to the system density operator, these dynamical invariants no longer share the equation of motion for the density operator. Moreover, the invariants obtained with from bi-orthonormal basis can be used to render an exact solution to the QSD equation and the corresponding non-Markovian dynamics without using master equations or numerical simulations. Significantly we show that we can apply these dynamic invariants to reverse-engineering a Hamiltonian that is capable of driving the system to the target state, providing a novel way to design control strategy for open quantum systems., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

Holonomic quantum computation (HQC) may not show its full potential in quantum speedup due to the prerequisite of a long coherent runtime imposed by the adiabatic condition. Here we show that the conventional HQC can be dramatically accelerated by using external control fields, of which the effectiveness is exclusively determined by the integral of the control fields in the time domain. Remarkably this control scheme can be realized with net zero energy cost and it is fault-tolerant against fluctuation and noise, significantly relaxing the experimental constraints. We demonstrate how to realize the scheme via decoherence-free subspaces. In this way we unify quantum robustness merits of this fault-tolerant control scheme, the conventional HQC and decoherence-free subspace, and propose an {\em expedited} holonomic quantum computation protocol., Comment: correct a typo

We prove that there exists a family of quantum systems that can be cooled to their ground states by a one-shot projective measurement on the ancillas coupled to these systems. Consequently, this proof gives rise to the conditions for achieving the one-shot measurement ground-state cooling (OSMGSC). We also propose a general procedure for finding unitary propagators and corresponding Hamiltonians to realize such cooling by means of inverse engineering technique., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

Solving realistic quantum systems coupled to an environment is a challenging task. Here we develop a hierarchical functional derivative (HFD) approach for efficiently solving the non-Markovian quantum trajectories of an open quantum system embedded in a bosonic bath. An explicit expression for arbitrary order HFD equation is derived systematically. Moreover, it is found that for an analytically solvable model, this hierarchical equation naturally terminates at a given order and thus becomes exactly solvable. This HFD approach provides a systematic method to study the non-Markovian quantum dynamics of an open system coupled to a bosonic environment., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures

We study the dynamics of two initially correlated qubits coupled to their own separate spin baths modeled by a XY spin chain and find the explicit expression of the quantum discord for the system. A sudden transition is found to exist between classical and quantum decoherence by choosing certain initial states. We show that the sudden transition happens near the critical point, which provides a new way to characterize the quantum phase transition. Furthermore, we propose a scheme to prolong the transition time of the quantum discord by applying the bang-bang pulses., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures