Cdc53p acts in concert with Cdc4p and Cdc34p to control the G1 to S phase transition and identifies a conserved family of proteins

Regulation of cell cycle progression occurs in part through the targeted degradation of both activating and inhibitory subunits of the cyclin-dependent kinases. During G1, CDC4, encoding a WD-40 repeat protein, and CDC34, encoding a ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme, are involved in the destruction of these regulators. Here we describe evidence indicating that CDC53 also is involved in this process. Mutations in CDC53 cause a phenotype indistinguishable from those of cdc4 and cdc34 mutations, numerous genetic interactions are seen between these genes, and the encoded proteins are found physically associated in vivo. Cdc53p defines a large family of proteins found in yeasts, nematodes, and humans whose molecular functions are uncharacterized. These results suggest a role for this family of proteins in regulating cell cycle proliferation through protein degradation

Cat States and Single Runs for the Damped Harmonic Oscillator

We discuss the fate of initial states of the cat type for the damped harmonic oscillator, mostly employing a linear version of the stochastic Schr\"odinger equation. We also comment on how such cat states might be prepared and on the relation of single realizations of the noise to single runs of experiments.Comment: 18, Revte

Optimal control of entanglement via quantum feedback

It has recently been shown that finding the optimal measurement on the environment for stationary Linear Quadratic Gaussian control problems is a semi-definite program. We apply this technique to the control of the EPR-correlations between two bosonic modes interacting via a parametric Hamiltonian at steady state. The optimal measurement turns out to be nonlocal homodyne measurement -- the outputs of the two modes must be combined before measurement. We also find the optimal local measurement and control technique. This gives the same degree of entanglement but a higher degree of purity than the local technique previously considered [S. Mancini, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 73}, 010304(R) (2006)].Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Stochastic simulations of the quantum Zeno effect

Published versio

Generalized stochastic Schroedinger equations for state vector collapse

A number of authors have proposed stochastic versions of the Schr\"odinger equation, either as effective evolution equations for open quantum systems or as alternative theories with an intrinsic collapse mechanism. We discuss here two directions for generalization of these equations. First, we study a general class of norm preserving stochastic evolution equations, and show that even after making several specializations, there is an infinity of possible stochastic Schr\"odinger equations for which state vector collapse is provable. Second, we explore the problem of formulating a relativistic stochastic Schr\"odinger equation, using a manifestly covariant equation for a quantum field system based on the interaction picture of Tomonaga and Schwinger. The stochastic noise term in this equation can couple to any local scalar density that commutes with the interaction energy density, and leads to collapse onto spatially localized eigenstates. However, as found in a similar model by Pearle, the equation predicts an infinite rate of energy nonconservation proportional to $\delta^3(\vec 0)$, arising from the local double commutator in the drift term.Comment: 24 pages Plain TeX. Minor changes, some new references. To appear in Journal of Physics

Physical interpretation of stochastic Schroedinger equations in cavity QED

We propose physical interpretations for stochastic methods which have been developed recently to describe the evolution of a quantum system interacting with a reservoir. As opposed to the usual reduced density operator approach, which refers to ensemble averages, these methods deal with the dynamics of single realizations, and involve the solution of stochastic Schr\"odinger equations. These procedures have been shown to be completely equivalent to the master equation approach when ensemble averages are taken over many realizations. We show that these techniques are not only convenient mathematical tools for dissipative systems, but may actually correspond to concrete physical processes, for any temperature of the reservoir. We consider a mode of the electromagnetic field in a cavity interacting with a beam of two- or three-level atoms, the field mode playing the role of a small system and the atomic beam standing for a reservoir at finite temperature, the interaction between them being given by the Jaynes-Cummings model. We show that the evolution of the field states, under continuous monitoring of the state of the atoms which leave the cavity, can be described in terms of either the Monte Carlo Wave-Function (quantum jump) method or a stochastic Schr\"odinger equation, depending on the system configuration. We also show that the Monte Carlo Wave-Function approach leads, for finite temperatures, to localization into jumping Fock states, while the diffusion equation method leads to localization into states with a diffusing average photon number, which for sufficiently small temperatures are close approximations to mildly squeezed states.Comment: 12 pages RevTeX 3.0 + 6 figures (GIF format; for higher-resolution postscript images or hardcopies contact the authors.) Submitted to Phys. Rev.

Targeting qubit states using open-loop control

We present an open-loop (bang-bang) scheme which drives an open two-level quantum system to any target state, while maintaining quantum coherence throughout the process. The control is illustrated by a realistic simulation for both adiabatic and thermal decoherence. In the thermal decoherence regime, the control achieved by the proposed scheme is qualitatively similar, at the ensemble level, to the control realized by the quantum feedback scheme of Wang, Wiseman, and Milburn [Phys. Rev. A 64, #063810 (2001)] for the spontaneous emission of a two-level atom. The performance of the open-loop scheme compares favorably against the quantum feedback scheme with respect to robustness, target fidelity and transition times.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure

Heating and decoherence suppression using decoupling techniques

We study the application of decoupling techniques to the case of a damped vibrational mode of a chain of trapped ions, which can be used as a quantum bus in linear ion trap quantum computers. We show that vibrational heating could be efficiently suppressed using appropriate ``parity kicks''. We also show that vibrational decoherence can be suppressed by this decoupling procedure, even though this is generally more difficult because the rate at which the parity kicks have to applied increases with the effective bath temperature.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. Typos corrected, references adde

State and dynamical parameter estimation for open quantum systems

Following the evolution of an open quantum system requires full knowledge of its dynamics. In this paper we consider open quantum systems for which the Hamiltonian is ``uncertain''. In particular, we treat in detail a simple system similar to that considered by Mabuchi [Quant. Semiclass. Opt. 8, 1103 (1996)]: a radiatively damped atom driven by an unknown Rabi frequency $\Omega$ (as would occur for an atom at an unknown point in a standing light wave). By measuring the environment of the system, knowledge about the system state, and about the uncertain dynamical parameter, can be acquired. We find that these two sorts of knowledge acquisition (quantified by the posterior distribution for $\Omega$, and the conditional purity of the system, respectively) are quite distinct processes, which are not strongly correlated. Also, the quality and quantity of knowledge gain depend strongly on the type of monitoring scheme. We compare five different detection schemes (direct, adaptive, homodyne of the $x$ quadrature, homodyne of the $y$ quadrature, and heterodyne) using four different measures of the knowledge gain (Shannon information about $\Omega$, variance in $\Omega$, long-time system purity, and short-time system purity).Comment: 14 pages, 18 figure

Quantum State Diffusion, Density Matrix Diagonalization and Decoherent Histories: A Model

We analyse the quantum evolution of a particle moving in a potential in interaction with an environment of harmonic oscillators in a thermal state, using the quantum state diffusion (QSD) picture of Gisin and Percival, in which one associates the usual Markovian master equation for the density operator with a class of stochastic non-linear Schr\"odinger equations. We find stationary solutions to the Ito equation which are Gaussians, localized around a point in phase space undergoing classical Brownian motion. We show that every initial state approaches these stationary solutions in the long time limit. We recover the density operator corresponding to these solutions, and thus show, for this particular model, that the QSD picture effectively supplies a prescription for approximately diagonalizing the density operator in a basis of phase space localized states. The rate of localization is related to the decoherence time, and also to the timescale on which thermal and quantum fluctuations become comparable. We use these results to exemplify the general connection between the QSD picture and the decoherent histories approach.Comment: 32 pages, plain Tex