Quantum dynamics, dissipation, and asymmetry effects in quantum dot arrays

We study the role of dissipation and structural defects on the time evolution of quantum dot arrays with mobile charges under external driving fields. These structures, proposed as quantum dot cellular automata, exhibit interesting quantum dynamics which we describe in terms of equations of motion for the density matrix. Using an open system approach, we study the role of asymmetries and the microscopic electron-phonon interaction on the general dynamical behavior of the charge distribution (polarization) of such systems. We find that the system response to the driving field is improved at low temperatures (and/or weak phonon coupling), before deteriorating as temperature and asymmetry increase. In addition to the study of the time evolution of polarization, we explore the linear entropy of the system in order to gain further insights into the competition between coherent evolution and dissipative processes.Comment: 11pages,9 figures(eps), submitted to PR

Simulating Markovian open quantum systems using higher-order series expansion

We present an efficient quantum algorithm for simulating the dynamics of Markovian open quantum systems. The performance of our algorithm is similar to the previous state-of-the-art quantum algorithm, i.e., it scales linearly in evolution time and poly-logarithmically in inverse precision. However, our algorithm is conceptually cleaner, and it only uses simple quantum primitives without compressed encoding. Our approach is based on a novel mathematical treatment of the evolution map, which involves a higher-order series expansion based on Duhamel's principle and approximating multiple integrals using scaled Gaussian quadrature. Our method easily generalizes to simulating quantum dynamics with time-dependent Lindbladians. Furthermore, our method of approximating multiple integrals using scaled Gaussian quadrature could potentially be used to produce a more efficient approximation of time-ordered integrals, and therefore can simplify existing quantum algorithms for simulating time-dependent Hamiltonians based on a truncated Dyson series.Comment: 28 pages, various minor changes. To appear in the 50th EATCS International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2023

Information flow in one-dimensional non-unitary quantum cellular automata

The information flow in a quantum system is a fundamental feature of its dynamics. An important class of dynamics are quantum cellular automata (QCA), systems with discrete updates invariant in time and space, for which an index theory has been proposed for the quantification of the net flow of quantum information across a boundary. While the index is rigid in the sense of begin invariant under finite-depth local circuits, it is not defined when the system is coupled to an environment, i.e. for non-unitary time evolution of open quantum systems. We propose a new measure of information flow for non-unitary QCA denoted the information current which is not rigid, but can be computed locally based on the matrix-product operator representation of the map.Comment: 21 pages, 23 figure

Quantum Cellular Automata

Quantum cellular automata (QCA) are reviewed, including early and more recent proposals. QCA are a generalization of (classical) cellular automata (CA) and in particular of reversible CA. The latter are reviewed shortly. An overview is given over early attempts by various authors to define one-dimensional QCA. These turned out to have serious shortcomings which are discussed as well. Various proposals subsequently put forward by a number of authors for a general definition of one- and higher-dimensional QCA are reviewed and their properties such as universality and reversibility are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the Springer Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Scienc