arXiv subjects

Patrice A. Camati

Publications and source records attributed to Patrice A. Camati.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Irreversibility of decorrelating processes: an experimental assessment in cavity QED

Entropy production quantifies the amount of irreversibility of a physical process, leading to fundamental bounds for thermodynamic quantities. It captures the inability to run a physical system forward and then backward, bringing it to the same initial state. Considerable research has been carried out in the last decades to extend entropy production to non-equilibrium quantum processes. We experimentally investigate the entropy production of such forward-backward cycles affected by genuinely quantum irreversibility. Namely, we consider processes realized to erase different types of correlations between two interacting systems, from obliterating solely quantum coherence to completely decorrelating local states. This makes the measurement of entropy production experimentally challenging. Addressing this challenge is the purpose of this paper.

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arXiv2025

Thermodynamics of autonomous optical Bloch equations

Optical Bloch Equations (OBEs) are canonical equations describing the dynamics of a classically driven atom coupled to a thermal bath. Their thermodynamics is highly relevant to establish fundamental energetic bounds of key quantum processes. A consistent framework is available in the regime where the drives and baths can be treated classically, i.e. remains insensitive to the coupling with the atom. This regime, however, is not adapted to explore minimal energy costs, nor to measure atom-induced energy variations inside drives and baths -- a key ability to directly measure and optimize work and heat exchanges. This calls for a new framework accounting for atomic back-actions on drives and baths. Here we build such a framework by describing the atom, the drive and the bath as a joint autonomous system, the drive and the bath being parts of the same electromagnetic field. Our approach captures atom-field correlations at fundamental timescales, as well as the atomic back-action on the field, allowing us to define work-like (heat-like) flows as energy flows stemming from effective unitary dynamics induced by one system on the other (non-unitary correlating dynamics). Time-integrated work-like and heat-like flows are directly measurable in the field, as changes of the mean field and fluctuations, respectively. Our approach differs from standard analyses by identifying an additional unitary contribution in the atom's dynamics, the self-drive, and its energetic counterpart, the self-work, yielding a tighter expression of the second law. We relate this tightening to the extra knowledge about the field state, as well as the potential of the interacted driving field to be recycled. Our autonomous framework deepens the current understanding of thermodynamics in the quantum regime and its potential for energy management at quantum scales.

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arXiv2023

Comparing the quantum switch and its simulations with energetically-constrained operations

Quantum mechanics allows processes to be superposed, leading to a genuinely quantum lack of causal structure. For example, the process known as the quantum switch applies two operations ${\cal A}$ and ${\cal B}$ in a superposition of the two possible orders, ${\cal A}$ before ${\cal B}$ and ${\cal B}$ before ${\cal A}$. Experimental implementations of the quantum switch have been challenged by some on the grounds that the operations ${\cal A}$ and ${\cal B}$ were implemented more than once, thereby simulating indefinite causal order rather than actually implementing it. Motivated by this debate, we consider a situation in which the quantum operations are physically described by a light-matter interaction model. While for our model the two processes are indistinguishable in the infinite energy regime, restricting the energy available for the implementation of the operations introduces imperfections, which allow one to distinguish processes using different number of operations. We consider such an energetically-constrained scenario and compare the quantum switch to one of its natural simulations, where each operation is implemented twice. Considering a commuting-vs-anticommuting unitary discrimination task, we find that within our model the quantum switch performs better, for some fixed amount of energy, than its simulation. In addition to the known computational or communication advantages of causal superpositions, our work raises new questions about their potential energetic advantages.

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arXiv2021

Closed-System Solution of the 1D Atom from Collision Model

Obtaining the total wavefunction evolution of interacting quantum systems provides access to important properties, such as entanglement, shedding light on fundamental aspects, e.g. quantum energetics and thermodynamics, and guiding towards possible application in the fields of quantum computation and communication. We consider a two-level atom (qubit) coupled to the continuum of travelling modes of a field confined in a one-dimensional waveguide. Originally, we treat the light-matter ensemble as a closed, isolated system. We solve its dynamics using a collision model where individual temporal modes of the field locally interact with the qubit in a sequential fashion. This approach allows us to obtain the total wavefunction of the qubit-field system, at any time, when the field starts in a coherent or a single-photon state. Our method is general and can be applied to other initial field states.

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arXiv2021

Probing non-classical light fields with energetic witnesses in Waveguide Quantum Electro-Dynamics

We analyze energy exchanges between a qubit and a resonant field propagating in a waveguide. The joint dynamics is analytically solved within a repeated interaction model. The work received by the qubit is defined as the unitary component of the field-induced energy change. Using the same definition for the field, we show that both work flows compensate each other. Focusing on the charging of a qubit battery by a pulse of light, we evidence that the work provided by a coherent field is an upper bound for the qubit ergotropy, while this bound can be violated by non-classical fields, e.g. a coherent superposition of zero- and single-photon states. Our results provide operational, energy-based witnesses to probe the non-classical nature of a light field.

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arXiv2021

Alternative experimental ways to access entropy production

We theoretically derive and experimentally compare several different ways to access entropy production in a quantum process under feedback control. We focus on a bipartite quantum system realizing an autonomous Maxwell's demon scheme reported by Najera-Santos et al. [Phys.~Rev.~Research 2, 032025(R) (2020)], where information encoded in a demon is consumed to transfer heat from a cold qubit to a hot cavity. By measuring individual quantum trajectories of the joint demon-cavity-qubit system, we compute the entropy production with six distinct expressions derived from different approaches to the system description and its evolution. Each method uses a specific set of trajectories and data processing. Our results provide a unified view on the various meanings of irreversibility in quantum systems and pave the way to the measurement of entropy production beyond thermal frameworks.

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arXiv2020

Employing Non-Markovian effects to improve the performance of a quantum Otto refrigerator

The extension of quantum thermodynamics to situations that go beyond standard thermodynamic settings comprises an important and interesting aspect of its development. One such situation is the analysis of the thermodynamic consequences of structured environments that induce a non-Markovian dynamics. We study a quantum Otto refrigerator where the standard Markovian cold reservoir is replaced by a specific engineered cold reservoir which may induce a Markovian or non-Markovian dynamics on the quantum refrigerant system. The two dynamical regimes can be interchanged by varying the coupling between the refrigerant and the reservoir. An increase of non-Markovian effects will be related to an increase of the coupling strength, which in turn will make the energy stored in the interaction Hamiltonian, the interaction energy, increasingly relevant. We show how the figures of merit, the coefficient of performance and the cooling power, change for non-negligible interaction energies, discussing how neglecting this effect would lead to an overestimation of the refrigerator performance. Finally, we also consider a numerical simulation of a spin quantum refrigerator with experimentally feasible parameters to better illustrate the non-Markovian effects induced by the engineered cold reservoir. We argue that a moderate non-Markovian dynamics performs better than either a Markovian or a strong non-Markovian regime of operation.

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arXiv2020

A two-qubit engine fueled by entangling operations and local measurements

We introduce a two-qubit engine that is powered by entangling operations and projective local quantum measurements. Energy is extracted from the detuned qubits coherently exchanging a single excitation. This engine, which uses the information and back-action of the measurement, is generalized to an N-qubit chain. We show that by gradually increasing the energy splitting along the chain, the initial low energy of the first qubit can be up-converted deterministically to an arbitrarily high energy at the last qubit by successive neighbor swap operations and local measurements. Modeling the local measurement as the entanglement of a qubit with a meter, we identify the measurement fuel as the energetic cost to erase correlations between the qubits.

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arXiv2020

Autonomous Maxwell's demon in a cavity QED system

We present an autonomous Maxwell's demon scheme. It is first analysed theoretically in term of information exchange in a closed system and then implemented experimentally with a single Rydberg atom and a high-quality microwave resonator. The atom simulates both a qubit interacting with the cavity, and a demon carrying information on the qubit state. While the cold qubit crosses the hot cavity, the demon prevents energy absorption from the cavity mode, apparently violating the second law of thermodynamics. Taking into account the change of the mutual information between the demon and the qubit-cavity system gives rise to a generalized expression of the second law that we establish and measure. Finally, considering the closed qubit-cavity-demon system, we establish and measure that the generalized second law can be recast into an entropy conservation law, as expected for a unitary evolution.

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arXiv2019

Coherence effects in the performance of the quantum Otto heat engine

The working substance fueling a quantum heat engine may contain coherence in its energy basis, depending on the dynamics of the engine cycle. In some models of quantum Otto heat engines, energy coherence has been associated with entropy production and quantum friction. We considered a quantum Otto heat engine operating at finite time. Coherence is generated and the working substance does not reach thermal equilibrium after interacting with the hot heat reservoir, leaving the working substance in a state with residual energy coherence. We observe an interference-like effect between the residual coherence (after the incomplete thermalization) and the coherence generated in the subsequent finite-time stroke. We introduce analytical expressions highlighting the role of coherence and examine how this dynamical interference effect influences the engine performance. Additionally, in this scenario in which coherence is present along the cycle, we argue that the careful tuning of the cycle parameters may exploit this interference effect and make coherence acts like a dynamical quantum lubricant. To illustrate this, we numerically consider an experimentally feasible example and compare the engine performance to the performance of a similar engine where the residual coherence is completely erased, ruling out the dynamical interference effect.

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arXiv2018

Verifying detailed fluctuation relations for discrete feedback-controlled quantum dynamics

Discrete quantum feedback control consists of a managed dynamics according to the information acquired by a previous measurement. Energy fluctuations along such dynamics satisfy generalized fluctuation relations, which are useful tools to study the thermodynamics of systems far away from equilibrium. Due to the practical challenge to assess energy fluctuations in the quantum scenario, the experimental verification of detailed fluctuation relations in the presence of feedback control remains elusive. We present a feasible method to experimentally verify detailed fluctuation relations for discrete feedback control quantum dynamics. Two detailed fluctuation relations are developed and employed. The method is based on a quantum interferometric strategy that allows the verification of fluctuation relations in the presence of feedback control. An analytical example to illustrate the applicability of the method is discussed. The comprehensive technique introduced here can be experimentally implemented at a microscale with the current technology in a variety of experimental platforms.

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