arXiv subjects

Federico Settimo

Publications and source records attributed to Federico Settimo.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Revivals of Bell nonlocality require Schr\"odinger and Heisenberg non-Markovianity

Bell nonlocality is a key resource in quantum information, demonstrating the nonclassicality of quantum theory. Noise, however, {is in general detrimental to} nonlocality, and can cause the loss of the ability to violate any Bell inequality. Memory effects, on the other hand, can restore {this} quantumness and, as recently shown, they can be {differently characterized} in the Schr\"odinger and in the Heisenberg picture. Here, we show that if memory effects allow for revivals in time of nonlocality, then the dynamics must be non-Markovian in both pictures. We showcase our findings through a device-independent quantum key distribution task, for which Bell nonlocality is necessary.

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arXiv2026

Schr\"odinger and Heisenberg non-Markovianity in quantum information tasks

Quantum non-Markovianity has been widely studied and connected to the existence of memory effects in the dynamics of open systems. Surprisingly, working in the Schr\"odinger or in the Heisenberg picture can provide inequivalent description non-Markovianity: a process can appear to be memoryless in one picture, while displaying memory effects in the other. Here, we investigate which kind of memory is relevant for different quantum information tasks. Some of them, such as sending information via a noisy channel, require memory in both pictures in order to exhibit revivals in the task performance. For others, only one type of memory is sufficient. We also provide necessary conditions for non-Markovianity in both pictures by only considering the dynamics in one picture, showing for instance that the previously considered witness of Schr\"odinger non-Markovianity in terms of the volume of accessible states does indeed witness non-Markovianity in both pictures at the same time.

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arXiv2026

Quantum jump unravelings for non-Markovian open system dynamics: a review

Stochastic unravelings provide a useful way to represent open quantum system dynamics in terms of pure state realizations, and have been widely studied both from a fundamental and from a computational point of view. They were initially formulated for Markovian dynamics described by the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad master equation. However, due to recent technological and experimental development, most physical relevant dynamics present temporal correlations beyond the Markov approximation. Such correlations cause decay rates to turn temporarily negative, thus requiring the generalization of stochastic unravelings from Markovian to non-Markovian scenarios. Indeed, many unraveling techniques have been introduced in this regime, and a comprehensive review of the different jump methods is currently missing. In this work, we provide an overview of widely used quantum jump unraveling techniques for non-Markovian systems and also discuss them in terms of their numerical efficiency, divisibility requirements, Hilbert space extension, and measurement interpretation.

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arXiv2025

Stochastic unravelings for Heisenberg picture and trace-nonpreserving dynamics

Stochastic unravelings allow to efficiently simulate open system dynamics, yet their application has traditionally been restricted to master equations that preserve both Hermiticity and trace. In this work, we introduce a general framework that extends piecewise-deterministic unravelings to arbitrary trace-nonpreserving master equations, requiring only positivity and Hermiticity of the dynamics. Our approach includes, as special cases, unravelings of arbitrary dynamics in the Heisenberg picture, evolutions interpolating between fully Lindblad and non-Hermitian Hamiltonian generators, and equations employed in the derivation of full counting statistics, for which we show it can be used to obtain the moments of the associated probability distribution. The framework is suitable for both trace-decreasing and trace-increasing processes through stochastic disappearance and replication of the stochastic realizations, and it is compatible with different unraveling schemes and with reverse jumps in the non-Markovian regime. Thereby, our approach provides a powerful and versatile simulation method that significantly broadens the applicability of stochastic techniques for open system dynamics.

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arXiv2025

Synchronization effects in a periodically driven two-level system

We study phase-synchronization in a driven two-level system coupled to a non-Markovian bosonic reservoir. The dynamics is described by treating the system-bath coupling and the coherent drive without invoking the rotating-wave approximation, and simulated using the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion. We observe that a robust phase-locking develops and that the corresponding synchronization measure rapidly acquires a finite value when the system is tuned to what we identify as a resonant-ratio condition, namely when the ratio between the drive amplitude and its frequency coincides with a zero of the Bessel function $J_0$. We provide an explanation for this phenomenon by means of a static approximation derived from a Fourier analysis of the periodically driven Hamiltonian.

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arXiv2025

Dynamics of Open Quantum Systems with Initial System-Environment Correlations via Stochastic Unravelings

In standard treatments of open quantum systems, the reduced dynamics is described starting from the assumption that the system and the environment are initially uncorrelated. This assumption, however, is not always guaranteed in realistic scenarios and several theoretical approaches to characterize initially correlated dynamics have been introduced. For the uncorrelated scenario, stochastic unravelings are a powerful tool to simulate the dynamics, but so far they have not been used in the most general case in which correlations are initially present. In our work, we employ the bath positive (B+) or one-sided positive decomposition (OPD) formalism as a starting point to generalize stochastic unraveling in the presence of initial correlations. Noticeably, our approach doesn't depend on the particular unraveling technique, but holds for both piecewise deterministic and diffusive unravelings. This generalization allows not only for more powerful simulations for the reduced dynamics, but also for a deeper theoretical understanding of open system dynamics.

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arXiv2025

A Stochastic Schr\"odinger Equation for the Generalized Rate Operator Unravelings

Stochastic unravelings are a widely used tool to solve open quantum system dynamics, in which the exact solution is obtained via an average over a stochastic process on the set of pure quantum states. Recently, the generalized rate operator unraveling formalism was derived, allowing not only for an engineering of the stochastic realizations, but also to unravel without reverse jumps even for some dynamics in which P-divisibility is violated, thus hugely improving the simulation efficiency. This is possible because the unraveling depend on an arbitrary non-linear transformation which can incorporate the memory effects. In this work, a stochastic Schr\"odinger equation for this formalism is derived, both for cases with and without reverse jumps. It is also shown that a failure of this method can be used to witness master equations leading unphysical time evolutions, independently on the particular non-linear transformation considered.

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arXiv2025

Divisibility of dynamical maps: Schr\"odinger vs. Heisenberg picture

Divisibility of dynamical maps is a central notion in the study of quantum non-Markovianity, providing a natural framework to characterize memory effects via time-local master equations. In this work, we generalize the notion of divisibility of quantum dynamical maps from the Schr\"odinger to the Heisenberg picture. While the two pictures are equivalent at the level of physical predictions, we show that the divisibility properties of the corresponding dual maps are, in general, not equivalent. This inequivalence originates from the distinction between left and right generators of time-local master equations, which interchange roles under duality. We demonstrate that Schr\"odinger and Heisenberg divisibility are distinct concepts by constructing explicit dynamics divisible only in one picture. Furthermore, we introduce a quantifier for the violation of Heisenberg P-divisibility, analogous to the trace-distance-based measure of non-Markovianity, and provide it with an operational interpretation in terms of the guessing probability between effects. Our results show that Heisenberg divisibility is an independent witness of memory effects and highlight the need to consider both pictures when characterizing non-Markovian quantum dynamics.

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arXiv2024

Generalized Rate Operator Quantum Jumps via Realization-Dependent Transformations

The dynamics of open quantum systems is often solved by stochastic unravellings where the average over the state vector realizations reproduces the density matrix evolution. We focus on quantum jump descriptions based on the rate operator formalism. In addition to displaying and exploiting different equivalent ways of writing the master equation, we introduce state-dependent rate operator transformations within the framework of stochastic pure state realizations, allowing us to extend and generalize the previously developed formalism. As a consequence, this improves the controllability of the stochastic realizations and subsequently greatly benefits when searching for optimal simulation schemes to solve open system dynamics. At a fundamental level, intriguingly, our results show that it is possible to have positive unravellings -- without reverse quantum jumps and avoiding the use of auxiliary degrees freedom -- in a number of example cases even when the corresponding dynamical map breaks the property of P-divisibility, thus being in the strongly non-Markovian regime.

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arXiv2022

Entropic and trace distance based measures of non-Markovianity

We analyze and compare different measures for the degree of non-Markovianity in the dynamics of open quantum systems. These measures are based on the distinguishability of quantum states which is quantified, on the one hand, by the trace distance or, more generally, by the trace norm of the Helstrom matrix, and, on the other hand, by entropic quantifiers: the Jensen-Shannon divergence, the Holevo or the quantum skew divergence. We explicitly construct a qubit dynamics for which the trace norm based non-Markovianity measure is nonzero, while all the entropic measures turn out to be zero. This leads to the surprising conclusion that the non-Markovianity measure which employs the trace norm of the Helstrom matrix is strictly stronger than all entropic non-Markovianity measures.

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