Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

J. E. Avron

Publications and source records attributed to J. E. Avron.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2018

Anomalous Decay and Decoherence in Atomic Gases

Pair collisions in atomic gases lead to decoherence and decay. Assuming that all the atoms in the gas are equally likely to collide one is led to consider Lindbladian of mean field type where the evolution in the limit of many atoms reduces to a single qudit Lindbladian with quadratic non-linearity. We describe three smoking guns for non-linear evolutions: Power law decay and dephasing rates; Dephasing rates that take a continuous range of values depending on the initial data and finally, anomalous flow of the Bloch ball towards a hemisphere.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2014

Lindbladians for controlled stochastic Hamiltonians

We construct Lindbladians associated with controlled stochastic Hamiltonians in weak coupling. This allows to determine the power spectrum of the noise from measurements of dephasing rates; to optimize the control and to test numerical algorithms that solve controlled stochastic Schrodinger equations. A few examples are worked out in detail.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2014

Braiding fluxes in Pauli Hamiltonian

Aharonov and Casher showed that Pauli Hamiltonians in two dimensions have gapless zero modes. We study the adiabatic evolution of these modes under the slow motion of $N$ fluxons with fluxes $Φ_a\in\mathbb{R}$. The positions, $\mathbf{r}_a\in\mathbb{R}^2$, of the fluxons are viewed as controls. We are interested in the holonomies associated with closed paths in the space of controls. The holonomies can sometimes be abelian, but in general are not. They can sometimes be topological, but in general are not. We analyze some of the special cases and some of the general ones. Our most interesting results concern the cases where holonomy turns out to be topological which is the case when all the fluxons are subcritical, $Φ_a<1$, and the number of zero modes is $D=N-1$. If $N\ge3$ it is also non-abelian. In the special case that the fluxons carry identical fluxes the resulting anyons satisfy the Burau representations of the braid group.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2014

A numerical study of the window condition for Chern numbers of Hofstadter Butterflies

The Chern numbers for Hofstadter models with rational flux 2*pi*p/q are partially determined by a Diophantine equation. A Mod q ambiguity remains. The resolution of this ambiguity is only known for the rectangular lattice with nearest neighbors hopping where it has the form of a "window condition". We study a Hofstadter butterfly on the triangular lattice for which the resolution of ambiguity is open. In the model many pairs (p,q) satisfy a window condition which is shifted relative to the window of the square model. However, we also find pairs (p,q) where the Chern numbers do not belong to any contiguous window. This shows that the rectangular model and the one we study on the triangular lattice are not adiabatically connected: Many gaps must close. Our results suggest the conjecture that the mod q ambiguity in the Diophantine equation generically reduces to a sign ambiguity.

math-ph↗
arXiv2013

Adiabatic response for Lindblad dynamics

We study the adiabatic response of open systems governed by Lindblad evolutions. In such systems, there is an ambiguity in the assignment of observables to fluxes (rates) such as velocities and currents. For the appropriate notion of flux, the formulas for the transport coefficients are simple and explicit and are governed by the parallel transport on the manifold of instantaneous stationary states. Among our results we show that the response coefficients of open systems, whose stationary states are projections, is given by the adiabatic curvature.

math-ph↗
arXiv2012

Adiabatic theorems for generators of contracting evolutions

We develop an adiabatic theory for generators of contracting evolution on Banach spaces. This provides a uniform framework for a host of adiabatic theorems ranging from unitary quantum evolutions through quantum evolutions of open systems generated by Lindbladians all the way to classically driven stochastic systems. In all these cases the adiabatic evolution approximates, to lowest order, the natural notion of parallel transport in the manifold of instantaneous stationary states. The dynamics in the manifold of instantaneous stationary states and transversal to it have distinct characteristics: The former is irreversible and the latter is transient in a sense that we explain. Both the gapped and gapless cases are considered. Some applications are discussed.

math-ph↗
arXiv2011

Optically induced rotation of a quantum dot exciton spin

We demonstrate control over the spin state of a semiconductor quantum dot exciton using a polarized picosecond laser pulse slightly detuned from a biexciton resonance. The control pulse follows an earlier pulse, which generates an exciton and initializes its spin state as a coherent superposition of its two non-degenerate eigenstates. The control pulse preferentially couples one component of the exciton state to the biexciton state, thereby rotating the exciton's spin direction. We detect the rotation by measuring the polarization of the exciton spectral line as a function of the time-difference between the two pulses. We show experimentally and theoretically how the angle of rotation depends on the detuning of the second pulse from the biexciton resonance.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2011

Quantum response of dephasing open systems

We develop a theory of adiabatic response for open systems governed by Lindblad evolutions. The theory determines the dependence of the response coefficients on the dephasing rates and allows for residual dissipation even when the ground state is protected by a spectral gap. We give quantum response a geometric interpretation in terms of Hilbert space projections: For a two level system and, more generally, for systems with suitable functional form of the dephasing, the dissipative and non-dissipative parts of the response are linked to a metric and to a symplectic form. The metric is the Fubini-Study metric and the symplectic form is the adiabatic curvature. When the metric and symplectic structures are compatible the non-dissipative part of the inverse matrix of response coefficients turns out to be immune to dephasing. We give three examples of physical systems whose quantum states induce compatible metric and symplectic structures on control space: The qubit, coherent states and a model of the integer quantum Hall effect.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2010

Radiative cascade from quantum dot metastable spin-blockaded biexciton

We detect a novel radiative cascade from a neutral semiconductor quantum dot. The cascade initiates from a metastable biexciton state in which the holes form a spin-triplet configuration, Pauli-blockaded from relaxation to the spin-singlet ground state. The triplet biexciton has two photon-phonon-photon decay paths. Unlike in the singlet-ground state biexciton radiative cascade, in which the two photons are co-linearly polarized, in the triplet biexciton cascade they are crosslinearly polarized. We measured the two-photon polarization density matrix and show that the phonon emitted when the intermediate exciton relaxes from excited to ground state, preserves the exciton's spin. The phonon, thus, does not carry with it any which-path information other than its energy. Nevertheless, entanglement distillation by spectral filtering was found to be rather ineffective for this cascade. This deficiency results from the opposite sign of the anisotropic electron-hole exchange interaction in the excited exciton relative to that in the ground exciton.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2010

Optimal parametrizations of adiabatic paths

The parametrization of adiabatic paths is optimal when tunneling is minimized. Hamiltonian evolutions do not have unique optimizers. However, dephasing Lindblad evolutions do. The optimizers are simply characterized by an Euler-Lagrange equation and have a constant tunneling rate along the path irrespective of the gap. Application to quantum search algorithms recovers the Grover result for appropriate scaling of the dephasing. Dephasing rates that beat Grover imply hidden resources in Lindblad operators.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2010

Landau-Zener tunneling for dephasing Lindblad evolutions

We derive an analog of the Landau-Zener adiabatic tunneling formula for an open, two-level system coupled to a memoryless, dephasing bath. The derivation rests on a geometric view of the spectral subspaces as adiabatic invariants.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2008

Entanglement and the geometry of two qubits

Two qubits is the simplest system where the notions of separable and entangled states and entanglement witnesses first appear. We give a three dimensional geometric description of these notions. This description however carries no quantitative information on the measure of entanglement. A four dimensional description captures also the entanglement measure. We give a neat formula for the Bell states which leads to a slick proof of the fundamental teleportation identity. We describe optimal distillation of two qubits geometrically and present a simple geometric proof of the Peres-Horodecki separability criterion.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2008

Distilling entanglement from cascades with partial "Which Path" ambiguity

We develop a framework to calculate the density matrix of a pair of photons emitted in a decay cascade with partial "which path" ambiguity. We describe an appropriate entanglement distillation scheme which works also for certain random cascades. The qualitative features of the distilled entanglement are presented in a two dimensional "phase diagram". The theory is applied to the quantum tomography of the decay cascade of a biexciton in a semiconductor quantum dot. Agreement with experiment is obtained.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2008

Entanglement on demand through time reordering

Entangled photons can be generated "on demand" in a novel scheme involving unitary time reordering of the photons emitted in a radiative decay cascade. The scheme yields polarization entangled photon pairs, even though prior to reordering the emitted photons carry significant "which path information" and their polarizations are unentangled. This shows that quantum chronology can be manipulated in a way that is lossless and deterministic (unitary). The theory can, in principle, be tested and applied to the biexciton cascade in semiconductor quantum dots.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2007

A geometric theory of swimming: Purcell's swimmer and its symmetrized cousin

We develop a qualitative geometric approach to swimming at low Reynolds number which avoids solving differential equations and uses instead landscape figures of two notions of curvatures: The swimming curvature and the curvature derived from dissipation. This approach gives complete information for swimmers that swim on a line without rotations and gives the main qualitative features for general swimmers that can also rotate. We illustrate this approach for a symmetric version of Purcell's swimmer which we solve by elementary analytical means within slender body theory. We then apply the theory to derive the basic qualitative properties of Purcell's swimmer.

physics.flu-dyn↗
arXiv2007

Visualizing Two Qubits

The notions of entanglement witnesses, separable and entangled states for two qubits system can be visualized in three dimensions using the SLOCC equivalence classes. This visualization preserves the duality relations between the various sets and allows us to give ``proof by inspection'' of a non-elementary result of the Horodeckies that for two qubits, Peres separability test is iff. We then show that the CHSH Bell inequalities can be visualized as circles and cylinders in the same diagram. This allows us to give a geometric proof of yet another result of the Horodeckies, which optimizes the violation of the CHSH Bell inequality. Finally, we give numerical evidence that, remarkably, allowing Alice and Bob to use three rather than two measurements each, does not help them to distinguish any new entangled SLOCC equivalence class beyond the CHSH class.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2007

Swimming, Pumping and Gliding at low Reynolds numbers

Simple, linear equations relate microscopic swimmers to the corresponding gliders and pumps. They have the following set of consequences: The swimming velocity of free swimmers can be inferred from the force on the tethered swimmer and vice versa; A tethered swimmer dissipates more energy than a free swimmer; It is possible to swim with arbitrarily high efficiency, but it is impossible to pump with arbitrarily high efficiency and finally that pumping is geometric. We also solve several optimization problems associated with swimming and pumping: The problem of optimal anchoring for a certain class of swimmers that includes the Purcell swimmer and the three linked spheres and the optimal geometries of helices considered as swimmers and pumps.

physics.flu-dyn↗