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Experimental control of the transition from Markovian to non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems
- Source :
- Nature Physics 7, 931-934 (2011)
- Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- Realistic quantum mechanical systems are always exposed to an external environment. The presence of the environment often gives rise to a Markovian process in which the system loses information to its surroundings. However, many quantum systems exhibit a pronounced non-Markovian behavior in which there is a flow of information from the environment back to the system, signifying the presence of quantum memory effects [1-5]. The environment is usually composed of a large number of degrees of freedom which are difficult to control, but some sophisticated schemes for modifying the environment have been developed [6]. The physical realization and control of dynamical processes in open quantum systems plays a decisive role, for example, in recent proposals for the generation of entangled states [7-9], for schemes of dissipative quantum computation [10], for the design of quantum memories [11] and for the enhancement of the efficiency in quantum metrology [12]. Here we report an experiment which allows through selective preparation of the initial environmental states to drive the open system from the Markovian to the non-Markovian regime, to control the information flow between the system and the environment, and to determine the degree of non-Markovianity by direct measurements on the open system.<br />Comment: The original submitted version; Nature Physics advance online publication, 11 September 2011
- Subjects :
- Quantum Physics
Subjects
Details
- Database :
- arXiv
- Journal :
- Nature Physics 7, 931-934 (2011)
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsarx.1109.2677
- Document Type :
- Working Paper
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2085