3,933 research outputs found
Elliptical orbits in the Bloch sphere
As is well known, when an SU(2) operation acts on a two-level system, its
Bloch vector rotates without change of magnitude. Considering a system composed
of two two-level systems, it is proven that for a class of nonlocal
interactions of the two subsystems including \sigma_i\otimes\sigma_j (with i,j
\in {x,y,z}) and the Heisenberg interaction, the geometric description of the
motion is particularly simple: each of the two Bloch vectors follows an
elliptical orbit within the Bloch sphere. The utility of this result is
demonstrated in two applications, the first of which bears on quantum control
via quantum interfaces. By employing nonunitary control operations, we extend
the idea of controllability to a set of points which are not necessarily
connected by unitary transformations. The second application shows how the
orbit of the coherence vector can be used to assess the entangling power of
Heisenberg exchange interaction.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, few corrections, J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass.
Opt. 7 (2005) S1-S
Driven Spin Systems as Quantum Thermodynamic Machines: Fundamental Limits
We show that coupled two level systems like qubits studied in quantum
information can be used as a thermodynamic machine. At least three qubits or
spins are necessary and arranged in a chain. The system is interfaced between
two split baths and the working spin in the middle is externally driven. The
machine performs Carnot-type cycles and is able to work as heat pump or engine
depending on the temperature difference of the baths and the energy
differences in the spin system . It can be shown that the efficiency
is a function of and .Comment: 9 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Failure of Effective Potential Approach: Nucleus-Electron Entanglement in the He-Ion
Entanglement may be considered a resource for quantum-information processing,
as the origin of robust and universal equilibrium behaviour, but also as a
limit to the validity of an effective potential approach, in which the
influence of certain interacting subsystems is treated as a potential. Here we
show that a closed three particle (two protons, one electron) model of a He-ion
featuring realistic size, interactions and energy scales of electron and
nucleus, respectively, exhibits different types of dynamics depending on the
initial state: For some cases the traditional approach, in which the nucleus
only appears as the center of a Coulomb potential, is valid, in others this
approach fails due to entanglement arising on a short time-scale. Eventually
the system can even show signatures of thermodynamical behaviour, i.e. the
electron may relax to a maximum local entropy state which is, to some extent,
independent of the details of the initial state.Comment: Submitted to Europhysics Letter
Pattern formation in quantum Turing machines
We investigate the iteration of a sequence of local and pair unitary
transformations, which can be interpreted to result from a Turing-head
(pseudo-spin ) rotating along a closed Turing-tape ( additional
pseudo-spins). The dynamical evolution of the Bloch-vector of , which can be
decomposed into primitive pure state Turing-head trajectories, gives
rise to fascinating geometrical patterns reflecting the entanglement between
head and tape. These machines thus provide intuitive examples for quantum
parallelism and, at the same time, means for local testing of quantum network
dynamics.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.A, 3 figures, REVTEX fil
Tight lower bound to the geometric measure of quantum discord
Dakic, Vedral and Brukner [Physical Review Letters \tf{105},190502 (2010)]
gave a geometric measure of quantum discord in a bipartite quantum state as the
distance of the state from the closest classical quantum (or zero discord)
state and derived an explicit formula for a two qubit state. Further, S.Luo and
S.Fu [Physical Review A \tf{82}, 034302 (2010)] obtained a generic form of this
geometric measure for a general bipartite state and established a lower bound.
In this brief report we obtain a rigorous lower bound to the geometric measure
of quantum discord in a general bipartite state which dominates that obtained
by S.Luo and S.Fu.Comment: 10 pages,2 figures. In the previous versions, a constraint was
ignored while optimizing the second term in Eq.(5), in which case, only a
lower bound on the geometric discord can be obtained. The title is also
consequently changed. Accepted in Phys.Rev.
Multipartite entanglement in fermionic systems via a geometric measure
We study multipartite entanglement in a system consisting of
indistinguishable fermions. Specifically, we have proposed a geometric
entanglement measure for N spin-1/2 fermions distributed over 2L modes (single
particle states). The measure is defined on the 2L qubit space isomorphic to
the Fock space for 2L single particle states. This entanglement measure is
defined for a given partition of 2L modes containing m >= 2 subsets. Thus this
measure applies to m <= 2L partite fermionic system where L is any finite
number, giving the number of sites. The Hilbert spaces associated with these
subsets may have different dimensions. Further, we have defined the local
quantum operations with respect to a given partition of modes. This definition
is generic and unifies different ways of dividing a fermionic system into
subsystems. We have shown, using a representative case, that the geometric
measure is invariant under local unitaries corresponding to a given partition.
We explicitly demonstrate the use of the measure to calculate multipartite
entanglement in some correlated electron systems. To the best of our knowledge,
there is no usable entanglement measure of m > 3 partite fermionic systems in
the literature, so that this is the first measure of multipartite entanglement
for fermionic systems going beyond the bipartite and tripartite cases.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure
Ignorance based inference of optimality in thermodynamic processes
We derive ignorance based prior distribution to quantify incomplete
information and show its use to estimate the optimal work characteristics of a
heat engine.Comment: Latex, 10 pages, 3 figure
Optimal refrigerator
We study a refrigerator model which consists of two -level systems
interacting via a pulsed external field. Each system couples to its own thermal
bath at temperatures and , respectively ().
The refrigerator functions in two steps: thermally isolated interaction between
the systems driven by the external field and isothermal relaxation back to
equilibrium. There is a complementarity between the power of heat transfer from
the cold bath and the efficiency: the latter nullifies when the former is
maximized and {\it vice versa}. A reasonable compromise is achieved by
optimizing the product of the heat-power and efficiency over the Hamiltonian of
the two system. The efficiency is then found to be bounded from below by
(an analogue of the Curzon-Ahlborn
efficiency), besides being bound from above by the Carnot efficiency
. The lower bound is reached in the
equilibrium limit . The Carnot bound is reached (for a finite
power and a finite amount of heat transferred per cycle) for . If
the above maximization is constrained by assuming homogeneous energy spectra
for both systems, the efficiency is bounded from above by and
converges to it for .Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
Spatially Resolved Outflows in a Seyfert Galaxy at z = 2.39
We present the first spatially resolved analysis of rest-frame optical and UV
imaging and spectroscopy for a lensed galaxy at z = 2.39 hosting a Seyfert
active galactic nucleus (AGN). Proximity to a natural guide star has enabled
high signal-to-noise VLT SINFONI + adaptive optics observations of rest-frame
optical diagnostic emission lines, which exhibit an underlying broad component
with FWHM ~ 700 km/s in both the Balmer and forbidden lines. Measured line
ratios place the outflow robustly in the region of the ionization diagnostic
diagrams associated with AGN. This unique opportunity - combining gravitational
lensing, AO guiding, redshift, and AGN activity - allows for a magnified view
of two main tracers of the physical conditions and structure of the
interstellar medium in a star-forming galaxy hosting a weak AGN at cosmic noon.
By analyzing the spatial extent and morphology of the Ly-alpha and
dust-corrected H-alpha emission, disentangling the effects of star formation
and AGN ionization on each tracer, and comparing the AGN induced mass outflow
rate to the host star formation rate, we find that the AGN does not
significantly impact the star formation within its host galaxy.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Fluctuating work in coherent quantum systems: proposals and limitations
One of the most important goals in quantum thermodynamics is to demonstrate
advantages of thermodynamic protocols over their classical counterparts. For
that, it is necessary to (i) develop theoretical tools and experimental set-ups
to deal with quantum coherence in thermodynamic contexts, and to (ii) elucidate
which properties are genuinely quantum in a thermodynamic process. In this
short review, we discuss proposals to define and measure work fluctuations that
allow to capture quantum interference phenomena. We also discuss fundamental
limitations arising due to measurement back-action, as well as connections
between work distributions and quantum contextuality. We hope the different
results summarised here motivate further research on the role of quantum
phenomena in thermodynamics.Comment: As a chapter of: F. Binder, L. A. Correa, C. Gogolin, J. Anders, and
G. Adesso (eds.), "Thermodynamics in the quantum regime - Recent Progress and
Outlook", (Springer International Publishing). Second version: Misspell in
the title correcte
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