arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to B. Militello.
A system consisting of two qubits and a resonator is considered in the presence of different sources of noise, bringing to light the possibility for making the two qubits evolve in a synchronized way. A direct qubit-qubit interaction turns out to be a crucial ingredient as well as dissipation processes involving the resonator. The detrimental role of local dephasing of the qubits is also taken into account.
A three-state system subjected to a time-dependent Hamiltonian whose bare energies undergo one or more crossings, depending on the relevant parameters, is considered, also taking into account the role of dissipation in the adiabatic following of the Hamiltonian eigenstates. Depending on the fact that the bare energies are equidistant or not, the relevant population transfer turns out to be very sensitive to the environmental interaction or relatively robust. The physical mechanisms on the basis of this behavior are discussed in detail.
The problem of a particle confined in a box with moving walls is studied, focusing on the case of small perturbations which do not alter the shape of the boundary (\lq pantography\rq). The presence of resonant transitions involving the natural transition frequencies of the system and the Fourier transform of the velocity of the walls of the box is brought to the light. The special case of a pantographic change of a circular box is analyzed in dept, also bringing to light the fact that the movement of the boundary cannot affect the angular momentum of the particle.
Two oscillators coupled to a two-level system which in turn is coupled to an infinite number of oscillators (reservoir) are considered, bringing to light the occurrence of synchronization. A detailed analysis clarifies the physical mechanism that forces the system to oscillate at a single frequency with a predictable and tunable phase difference. Finally, the scheme is generalized to the case of $N$ oscillators and $M(<N)$ two-level systems.
The sensitivity of a repeated measurement-based purification scheme to additional undesired couplings is analyzed, focusing on the very simple and archetypical system consisting of two two-level systems interacting with a repeatedly measured one. Several regimes are considered and in the strong coupling (i.e., when the coupling constant of the undesired interaction is very large) the occurrence of a quantum Zeno effect is proven to dramatically jeopardize the efficiency of the purification process.
We consider the dissipative single-qubit circuit QED architecture in which the atomic transition frequency undergoes a weak external time-modulation. For sinusoidal modulation with linearly varying frequency we derive effective Hamiltonians that resemble the Landau-Zener problem of finite duration associated to a two- or multi-level systems. The corresponding off-diagonal coupling coefficients originate either from the rotating or the counter-rotating terms in the Rabi Hamiltonian, depending on the values of the modulation frequency. It is demonstrated that in the dissipation less case one can accomplish almost complete transitions between the eigenstates of the bare Rabi Hamiltonian even for relatively short duration of the frequency sweep. To assess the experimental feasibility of our scheme we solved numerically the phenomenological and the microscopic quantum master equations in the Markovian regime at zero temperature. Both models exhibit qualitatively similar behavior and indicate that photon generation from vacuum via effective Landau-Zener transitions could be implemented with the current technology on the timescales of a few microseconds. Moreover, unlike the harmonic dynamical Casimir effect implementations, our proposal does not require the precise knowledge of the resonant modulation frequency to accomplish meaningful photon generation.
Some recent results concerning a particle confined in a one-dimensional box with moving walls are briefly reviewed. By exploiting the same techniques used for the 1D problem, we investigate the behavior of a quantum particle confined in a two-dimensional box (a 2D billiard) whose walls are moving, by recasting the relevant mathematical problem with moving boundaries in the form of a problem with fixed boundaries and time-dependent Hamiltonian. Changes of the shape of the box are shown to be important, as it clearly emerges from the comparison between the "pantographic", case (same shape of the box through all the process) and the case with deformation.
Complete positivity of a class of maps generated by master equations derived beyond the secular approximation is discussed. The connection between such class of evolutions and physical properties of the system is analyzed in depth. It is also shown that under suitable hypotheses a Zeno dynamics can be induced because of the high temperature of the bath.
A simple algebraic approach to the study of multipartite entanglement for pure states is introduced together with a class of suitable functionals able to detect entanglement. On this basis, some known results are reproduced. Indeed, by investigating the properties of the introduced functionals, it is shown that a subset of such class is strictly connected to the purity. Moreover, a direct and basic solution to the problem of the simultaneous maximization of three appropriate functionals for three-qubit states is provided, confirming that the simultaneous maximization of the entanglement for all possible bipartitions is compatible only with the structure of GHZ-states.
Temperature can be responsible for strengthening effective couplings between quantum states, determining a hierarchy of interactions, and making it possible to establish such dynamical regimes known as Zeno dynamics, wherein a strong coupling can hinder the effects of a weak one. The relevant physical mechanisms which connect the structure of a thermal state with the appearance of special dynamical regimes are analyzed in depth.
We discuss the partitioning of the Hilbert space of a quantum system induced by the interaction with another system at thermal equilibrium, showing that the higher the temperature the more effective is the formation of Zeno subspaces. We show that our analysis keeps its validity even in the case of interaction with a bosonic reservoir, provided appropriate limitations of the relevant bandwidth.
We analyze the effect of a dissipative bosonic environment on the Landau-Zener-Stuckelberg-Majorana (LZSM) level crossing model by using a microscopic approach to derive the relevant master equation. For an environment at zero temperature and weak dissipation our microscopic approach confirms the independence of the survival probability on the decay rate that has been predicted earlier by the simple phenomenological LZSM model. For strong decay the microscopic approach predicts a notable increase of the survival probability, which signals dynamical decoupling of the initial state. Unlike the phenomenological model our approach makes it possible to study the dependence of the system dynamics on the temperature of the environment. In the limit of very high temperature we find that the dynamics is characterized by a very strong dynamical decoupling of the initial state - temperature-induced quantum Zeno effect.
In a recent paper [M. Huber {\it et al}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 104}, 210501 (2010)] new criteria to find out the presence of multipartite entanglement have been given. We exploit these tools in order to study thermal entanglement in a spin-star network made of three peripheral spins interacting with a central one. Genuine tripartite entanglement is found in a wide range of the relevant parameters. A comparison between predictions based on the new criteria and on the tripartite negativity is also given.
We exploit the tripartite negativity to study the thermal correlations in a tripartite system, that is the three outer spins interacting with the central one in a spin-star system. We analyze the dependence of such correlations on the homogeneity of the interactions, starting from the case where central-outer spin interactions are identical and then focusing on the case where the three coupling constants are different. We single out some important differences between the negativity and the concurrence.
We exploit a microscopically derived master equation for the study of STIRAP in the presence of decay from the auxiliary level toward the initial and final state, and compare our results with the predictions obtained from a phenomenological model previously used [P. A. Ivanov, N. V. Vitanov, and K. Bergmann, Phys. Rev. A 72, 053412 (2005)]. It is shown that our approach predicts a much higher efficiency. The effects of temperature are also taken into account, proving that in b-STIRAP thermal pumping can increase the efficiency of the population transfer.
A master equation approach to the study of environmental effects in the adiabatic population transfer in three-state systems is presented. A systematic comparison with the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian approach [N. V. Vitanov and S. Stenholm, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 56}, 1463 (1997)] shows that in the weak coupling limit the two treatments lead to essentially the same results. Instead, in the strong damping limit the predictions are quite different: in particular the counterintuitive sequences in the STIRAP scheme turn out to be much more efficient than expected before. This point is explained in terms of quantum Zeno dynamics.
We provide a microscopic derivation for the non-Markovian master equation for an atom-cavity system with cavity losses and show that they can induce population trapping in the atomic excited state, when the environment outside the cavity has a non-flat spectrum. Our results apply to hybrid solid state systems and can turn out to be helpful to find the most appropriate description of leakage in the recent developments of cavity quantum electrodynamics.
Decoherence is believed to deteriorate the ability of a purification scheme that is based on the idea of driving a system to a pure state by repeatedly measuring another system in interaction with the former and hinder for a pure state to be extracted asymptotically. Nevertheless, we find a way out of this difficulty by deriving an analytic expression of the reduced density matrix for a two-qubit system immersed in a bath. It is shown that we can still extract a pure state if the environment brings about only dephasing effects. In addition, for a dissipative environment, there is a possibility of obtaining a dominant pure state when we perform a finite number of measurements.