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We experimentally investigate the one-shot distillation of quantum coherence, which focuses on the transformations from a single copy of a given state into maximally coherent states under various incoherent operations. We present a general proposal to realize a type of strictly incoherent operations (SIOs) that can act on N -dimensional ( N ≥ 2 ) states. This proposal is suitable for a variety of quantum devices. Based on a linear optical setup, we experimentally demonstrate that the proposed SIO successfully implements pure-to-pure state transformations, and thus the one-shot coherence distillation process is accomplished. The experimental data agree well with the theoretical results and clearly indicate the distillation fidelities, which bound the regions of different coherence distillation rates versus different superposition parameters of input states and different distillation errors.

We investigate the nonequilibrium current noise spectrum of single impurity Anderson model quantum dot systems on the basis of the accurate dissipation equation of motion evaluations. By comparing between the equilibrium and nonequilibrium cases and between the non-Kondo and Kondo regimes, we identify the current noise spectrum of the nonequilibrium Kondo features that actually appear in the entire region of ω ∈ [−eV, eV]. It is well known that the primary Kondo characteristics at ω = ±eV = ±(μL − μR) display asymmetrical upturns and remarkable peaks in S(ω) and dS(ω)/dω, respectively. These features are originated from the Rabi interference of the transport current dynamics, with the Kondo oscillation frequency of |eV|. Moreover, we also identify the minor but very distinguishable inflections, crossing over from ω = −eV to ω = +eV. This uncovered feature would be related to the interference between two Kondo resonance channels.

We investigate the charge-states coherence underlying the nonequilibirum transport through a spinless double-dot Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interferometer. Both the current noise spectrum and real-time dynamics are evaluated with the well-established dissipaton-equation-of-motion method. The resulted spectrums show the characteristic peaks and dips, arising from coherent Rabi oscillation dynamics, with the environment-assisted indirect inter-dot tunnel coupling mechanism. The observed spectroscopic features are in a quantitative agreement to the real-time dynamics of the reduced density matrix off-diagonal element between two charge states. As the aforementioned mechanism, these characteristics of coherence are very sensitive to the AB phase. While this is generally true for cross-correlation spectrum, the total circuit noise spectrum that is experimentally more accessible shows remarkably rich interplay between various mechanisms. The most important finding of this work is the existence of Coulomb-blockade-assisted Rabi interference, with very distinct signatures arising from the interplay between the AB interferometer and the interdot Coulomb interaction induced Fano resonance., 10 pages,5 figures

The preparation of initial superposition states of discrete-time quantum walks (DTQWs) are necessary for the study and applications of DTQWs. In linear optics, it is easy to prepare initial superposition states of the coin, which are always encoded by polarization states; while the preparation of superposition states of the walker is challenging. Based on a novel encoding method, we here propose a DTQW protocol in linear optics which enables the preparation of arbitrary initial superposition states of the walker and the coin. With this protocol, we report an experimental demonstration of DTQW with the walker initially in superposition states, by using only passive linear-optical elements. The effects of the walker's different initial superposition states on the spread speed of the DTQW and on the entanglement between the coin and the walker are also experimentally investigated, which have not been reported before. When the walker starts with superposition states, we show that the properties of DTQW are very different from those of DTQW starting with a single position. Our findings reveal different properties of DTQW and paves an avenue to study DTQW with arbitrary initial states. Moreover, the encoding method enables one to encode an arbitrary high-dimensional quantum state using a single physical qubit and may be adopted to implement other quantum information tasks., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted in npj Quantum Information

We investigate the dynamics of charge--states coherence in a degenerate double--dot Aharonov--Bohm interferometer with finite interdot Coulomb interactions. The quantum coherence of the charge states is found to be sensitive to the transport setup configurations, involving both the single--electron impurity channels and the Coulomb--assisted ones. We numerically demonstrate the emergence of a complete coherence between the two charge states, with the relative phase being continuously controllable through the magnetic flux. Remarkably, a fully coherent charge qubit arises at the double--dots electron pair tunneling resonance condition, where the chemical potential of one electrode is tuned at the center between a single--electron impurity channel and the related Coulomb--assisted channel. This pure quantum state of charge qubit could be \emph{experimentally located} at the current--voltage characteristic turnover position, where differential conductance sign changes. We further elaborate the underlying mechanism for both the real--time and the stationary charge--states coherences in the double--dot systems of study., 8pages, 4 figures

We construct a particle-number(n)-resolved master equation (ME) approach under the self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA) for quantum transport through mesoscopic systems. The formulation is essentially non-Markovian and incorporates the interlay of the multi-tunneling processes and many-body correlations. The proposed n-SCBA-ME goes completely beyond the scope of the Born-Markov master equation, being applicable to transport under small bias voltage, in non-Markovian regime and with strong Coulomb correlations. For steady state, it can recover not only the exact result of noninteracting transport under arbitrary voltages, but also the challenging nonequilibrium Kondo effect. Moreover, the n-SCBA-ME approach is efficient for the study of shot noise.We demonstrate the application by a couple of representative examples, including particularly the nonequilibrium Kondo system., arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1302.6386

This paper presents a comprehensive account of the dissipaton-equation-of-motion (DEOM) theory for open quantum systems. This newly developed theory treats not only the quantum dissipative systems of primary interest, but also the hybrid environment dynamics that are also experimentally measurable. Despite the fact that DEOM recovers the celebrated hierarchical-equations-of-motion (HEOM) formalism, these two approaches have some fundamental differences. To show these differences, we also scrutinize the HEOM construction via its root at the influence functional path integral formalism. We conclude that many unique features of DEOM are beyond the reach of the HEOM framework. The new DEOM approach renders a statistical quasi-particle picture to account for the environment, which can be either bosonic or fermionic. The review covers the DEOM construction, the physical meanings of dynamical variables, the underlying theorems and dissipaton algebra, and recent numerical advancements for efficient DEOM evaluations of various problems. We also address the issue of high-order many-dissipaton truncations with respect to the invariance principle of quantum mechanics of Schrodinger versus Heisenberg prescriptions. DEOM serves as a universal tool for characterizing of stationary and dynamic properties of system-and-bath interferences, as highlighted with its real-time evaluation of both linear and nonlinear current noise spectra of nonequilibrium electronic transport.

We present a generic unraveling scheme for a detailed-balance-preserved quantum master equation applicable for stochastic point processes in mesoscopic transport. It enables us to investigate continuous measurement of a qubit on the level of single quantum trajectories, where essential correlations between the inherent dynamics of the qubit and detector current fluctuations are revealed. Based on this unraveling scheme, feedback control of the charge qubit is implemented to achieve a desired pure state in the presence of the detailed-balance condition. With sufficient feedback strength, coherent oscillations of the measured qubit can be maintained for arbitrary qubit-detector coupling. Competition between the loss and restoration of coherence entailed, respectively, by measurement back action and feedback control is reflected in the noise power spectrum of the detector's output. It is demonstrated unambiguously that the signal-to-noise ratio is significantly enhanced with increasing feedback strength and could even exceed the well-known Korotkov-Averin bound in quantum measurement. The proposed unraveling and feedback scheme offers a transparent and straightforward approach to effectively sustaining ideal coherent oscillations of a charge qubit in the field of quantum computation.

Beyond the conventional quantum regression theorem, a general formula for non-Markovian correlation functions of arbitrary system operators both in the time- and frequency-domain is given. We approach the problem by transforming the conventional time-nonlocal master equation into dispersed time-local equations-of-motion. The validity of our approximations is discussed and we find that the non-Markovian terms have to be included for short times. While calculations of the density matrix at short times suffer from the initial value problem, a correlation function has a well defined initial state. The resulting formula for the non-Markovian correlation function has a simple structure and is as convenient in its application as the conventional quantum regression theorem for the Markovian case. For illustrations, we apply our method to investigate the spectrum of the current fluctuations of interacting quantum dots contacted with two electrodes. The corresponding non-Markovian characteristics are demonstrated., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures

We experimentally simulate a quantum channel in a linear optical setup, which is modeled by a two-level system (i.e., qubit) interacting with a bosonic bath. Unlike the traditional works, we treat the system–bath interaction without applying the Born approximation, the Markov approximation, or the rotating-wave approximation (RWA). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental simulation of a quantum channel without any of the approximations mentioned above by using linear optical devices. This non-RWA channel provides a more accurate picture of the quantum open-system dynamics. It not only reveals the effect of the counterrotating terms but also enables us to consider arbitrarily strong coupling regimes. With the proposed channel, we further experimentally investigate the dynamics of the quantum temporal steering (TS), i.e., a temporal analog of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen steering. The experimental and theoretical results are in good agreement and show that the counterrotating terms significantly influence the TS dynamics. The TS in non-RWA and RWA channels presents different dynamics. However, we emphasize that the results without RWA are closer to realistic situations and thus more reliable. Due to the close relationship between TS and the security of the quantum cryptographic protocols, our findings are expected to have useful applications in secure quantum communications. This work also inspires future interest in studying other quantum coherence properties in the non-RWA channels.

We consider a transmission line resonator which is driven by electrons tunneling through a voltage-biased tunnel junction. Using the Born-Markovian quantum master equation in the polaron basis we investigate the nonequilibrium photon state and emission spectrum of the resonator as well as properties of the transport current across the tunnel junction and its noise spectrum. The electroluminescence is optimized, with maximum peak height and narrow linewidth, when the back-action of the tunnel junction on the resonator and the decay rate of the resonator are similar in strength. For strong coupling between the resonator and tunnel junction, multi-photon effects show up in the noise spectrum of the transport current.

We propose a hierarchical dynamics approach for evaluation of nonequilibrium dynamic response properties of quantum impurity systems. It is based on a hierarchical equations of motion formalism, in conjunction with a linear response theory established in the hierarchical Liouville space. This provides an accurate and universal tool for characterization of a variety of response and correlation functions of local impurities, as well as transport related response properties. The practicality of our proposed approach is demonstrated via the evaluation of various dynamical properties of a single-impurity Anderson model. These include the impurity spectral density, local charge fluctuation, local magnetic susceptibility, and current-voltage admittance, in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium situations. The numerical results are considered to be quantitatively accurate, as long as they converge quantitatively with respect to the truncation of the hierarchy.

We construct a number($n$)-resolved master equation (ME) approach under self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA) for noise spectrum calculation. The formulation is essentially non-Markovian and incorporates properly the interlay of the multi-tunneling processes and many-body correlations. We apply this approach to the challenging nonequilibrium Kondo system and predict a profound nonequilibrium Kondo signature in the shot noise spectrum. The proposed $n$-SCBA-ME scheme goes completely beyond the scope of the Born-Markovian master equation approach, in the sense of being applicable to the shot noise of transport under small bias voltage, in non-Markovian regime, and with strong Coulomb correlations as favorably demonstrated in the nonequilibrium Kondo system., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure

Single-electron tunneling processes through a double quantum dot can induce a lasing state in an electromagnetic resonator which is coupled coherently to the dot system. Here we study the noise properties of the transport current in the lasing regime, i.e., both the zero-frequency shot noise as well as the noise spectrum. The former shows a remarkable super-Poissonian behavior when the system approaches the lasing transition, but sub-Poissonian behavior deep in the lasing state. The noise spectrum contains information about the coherent dynamics of the coupled dot-resonator system. It shows pronounced structure at a frequency matching that of the resonator due to the excitation of photons. For strong interdot Coulomb interaction we find asymmetries in the auto-correlation noise spectra of the left and right junctions, which we trace back to asymmetries in the incoherent tunneling channels., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

In mean field approximation, we study a chiral soliton of the linear sigma model with two flavors at finite temperature and density. The stable soliton solutions are calculated with some appropriate boundary conditions. Energy and radius of the soliton are determined in a hot medium of constituent quarks. It is found that for $TT_c$, there is a sharp delocalization phase transition from hadron matter to quark matter coincident with the restoration of chiral symmetry. In the transition region, the thermodynamic properties show large discontinuities which is an indication for a first-order phase transition., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, version accepted for publication in Physical Review C

Based on the time-nonlocal particle number-resolved master equation, we investigate the sequential electron transport through the interacting double quantum dots. Our calculations show that there exists the effect of energy renormalization in the dispersion of the bath interaction spectrum and it is sensitive to the the bandwidth of the bath. This effect would strongly affect the stationary current and its zero-frequency shot noise for weak inter-dot coherent coupling strength, but for strong inter-dot coupling regime, it is negligible due to the strong intrinsic Rabi coherent dynamics. Moreover, the possible observable effects of the energy renormalization in the noise spectrum are also investigated through the Rabi coherence signal. Finally, the non-Markovian effect is manifested in the finite-frequency noise spectrum with the appearance of quasisteps, and the magnitude of these quasisteps are modified by the dispersion function.

Inelastic electron transport in quantum dot systems is studied via the hierarchical equations of motion combining a small polaron transformation approach, with differential conductance $dI/dV\ensuremath{\sim}V$ characteristics being evaluated accurately at the cotunneling level. We observe (i) the peak feature of phonon emission Franck-Condon sidebands to the zero-phonon peaks of both polaron and bipolaron in sequential electron transport; (ii) phonon absorption peaks occurring if the phonon temperature is sufficiently higher than that of the carrier electron; and (iii) the step feature of Raman sidebands in the cotunneling transport regime. We also evaluate the polaron transport response to a continuous-wave irradiation that induces bias-voltage oscillation. We observe, consistent with experimental results, that (iv) the photon-phonon-assisted tunneling enhances phonon absorptions while suppressing emissions. As the phonon absorption (emission) is associated with the process of absorbing (emitting) energy from (to) the phonon environment, an alternating or tailored field applied to contacts could be a practical means of cooling the mesoscopic quantum-transport device.

Real-time nonequilibrium quantum dynamics of electrons in double-dot Aharonov-Bohm (AB) interferometers is studied using an exact solution of the master equation. The building of the coherence between the two electronic paths shows up via the time-dependent amplitude of the AB oscillations in the transient transport current, and can be enhanced by varying the applied bias on the leads, the on-site energy difference between the dots and the asymmetry of the coupling of the dots to the leads. The transient oscillations of the transport current do not obey phase rigidity. The circulating current has an anti-symmetric AB oscillation in the flux. The non-degeneracy of the on-site energies and the finite bias cause the occupation in each dot to have an arbitrary flux dependence as the coupling asymmetry is varied., 11 pages, 5 figures

The nonequilibrium real-time dynamics of electron decoherence is explored in the quantum transport through the nanoscale double-dot Aharonov-Bohm interferometers. We solve the exact master equation to find the exact quantum state of the device, from which the changes of the electron coherence through the magnetic flux in the nonequilibrium transport processes is obtained explicitly. We find that the relative phase between the two charge states of the degenerate double dot localizes to π 2 or − π for all different magnetic fluxes, due to decoherence. This nontrivial decoherence process can be manifested in the measurable occupation numbers.

The phase diagram at finite temperature and density is investigated in the framework of the Polyakov linear sigma model (PLSM) with three light quark flavors in the mean field approximation. It is found that in the PLSM, the three phase transitions, i.e, the chiral restoration of $u,d$ quarks, the chiral restoration of $s$ quark, and the deconfinement phase transition are independent. There exists two-flavor quarkyonic phase at low density and three-flavor quarkyonic phase at high density. The critical end point (CEP) which separating the crossover from the first-order line in the PLSM model is located at$(T_E, \mu_E)=(188 \mathrm{MeV},139.5 \mathrm{MeV})$. In the transition region the thermodynamic properties and bulk viscosity over entropy density ratio $\zeta/s$ are also discussed in the PLSM., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, version to appear in J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys

We present a comprehensive theoretical investigation on the dynamic electronic response of a noninteracting quantum dot system to various forms of time-dependent voltage applied to the single contact lead. Numerical simulations are carried out by implementing a recently developed hierarchical equations of motion formalism [J. S. Jin et al., J. Chem. Phys. 128, 234703 (2008)], which is formally exact for a fermionic system interacting with grand canonical fermionic reservoirs, in the presence of arbitrary time-dependent applied chemical potentials. The dynamical characteristics of the transient transport current evaluated in both linear and nonlinear-response regimes are analyzed, and the equivalent classic circuit corresponding to the coupled dot-lead system is also discussed.

We present an exact quantum dissipation theory in terms of the hierarchical equations‐of‐motion formalism for an arbitrary open electronic system. This formalism provides a theoretical tool to study various transient and stationary properties of many‐body systems far away from equilibrium. In contact with transport current, we explicitly show that how the hierarchial scheme relates to various tunneling processes, such as sequential tunneling, cotunneling, and high‐order events. The present hierarchical scheme numerically converges in general. It accounts for the combined effects of the many‐particle interaction within the system and the nature of the system‐bath coupling. In particular, for noninteracting systems, it terminates at the second tier exactly.

Based on the Yan's dissipaton equation of motion (DEOM) theory [J. Chem. Phys. 140, 054105 (2014)], we investigate the characteristic features of current noise spectrum in several typical transport regimes of a single-impurity Anderson model. Many well-known features such as Kondo features are correctly recovered by our DEOM calculations. More importantly, it is revealed that the intrinsic electron cotunneling process is responsible for the characteristic signature of current noise at anti-Stokes frequency. We also identify completely destructive interference in the noise spectra of noninteracting systems with two degenerate transport channels.

Conventional quantum trajectory theory developed in quantum optics is largely based on the physical unravelling of Lindbald-type master equation, which constitutes the theoretical basis of continuous quantum measurement and feedback control. In this work, in the context of continuous quantum measurement and feedback control of a solid-state charge qubit, we present a physical unravelling scheme of non-Lindblad type master equation. Self-consistency and numerical efficiency are well demonstrated. In particular, the control effect is manifested in the detector noise spectrum, and the effect of measurement voltage is discussed., 8 pages, 5 figures

The optical manipulation of electron spins is of great benefit to solid-state quantum information processing. In this letter, we provide a comparative study on the ultrafast optical manipulation of single electron spin in the doped and undoped quantum dots. The study indicates that the experimental breakthrough can be preliminarily made in the undoped quantum dots, because of the relatively less demand., Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures

A Monte Carlo simulation on the basis of quantum trajectory approach is carried out for the measurement dynamics of a single electron spin resonance. The measured electron, which is confined in either a quantum dot or a defect trap, is tunnel-coupled to a side reservoir and continuously monitored by a mesoscopic detector. The simulation not only recovers the observed telegraphic signal of detector current, but also predicts unique features in the output power spectrum which are associated with electron dynamics in different regimes., 5 pages, 4 figures, version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. B

Submicron Hall magnetometry has been demonstrated as an efficient technique to probe extremely weak magnetic fields. In this letter, we analyze the possibility of employing it to detect single electron spin. Signal strength and readout time are estimated and discussed with respect to a number of practical issues., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

It is impossible to discriminate four Bell states through local operations and classical communication, if only one copy is provided. To complete this task, two copies will suffice and be necessary. When 2n copies are provided, we show that the distillable entanglement is exactly 2n-2. Surprisingly, when 2n-1 copies are provided, the distillable entanglement is also 2n-2.

Beyond the second-order Born approximation, we propose an improved master equation approach to quantum transport under self-consistent Born approximation. The basic idea is to replace the free Green's function in the tunneling self-energy diagram by an effective reduced propagator under the Born approximation. This simple modification has remarkable consequences. It not only recovers the exact results for quantum transport through noninteracting systems under arbitrary voltages, but also predicts the challenging nonequilibrium Kondo effect. Compared to the nonequilibrium Green's function technique that formulates the calculation of specific correlation functions, the master equation approach contains richer dynamical information to allow more efficient studies for such as the shot noise and full counting statistics.

In terms of the exact quantum master equation solution for open electronic systems, the coherent dynamics of two charge states described by two parallel quantum dots with one fully polarized electron on either dot is investigated in the presence of spin-orbit interaction. We demonstrate that the double dot system can stay in a dynamically decoherence free space. The coherence between two double dot charge states can be precisely manipulated through a spin-orbit coupling. The effects of the temperature, the finite bandwidth of lead, and the energy deviations during the coherence manipulation are also explored., 6 pagges, 4 figures

The generalized quantum master equation with transport particle number resolution, like its conventional unconditioned counterpart, has also the time-local and time-nonlocal prescriptions.The latter is found to be more suitable for the effect of electrodes bandwidth on quantum transport and noise spectrum for weak system-reservoir coupling, as calibrated with the exact results in the absence of Coulomb interaction. We further analyze the effect of Coulomb interaction on the noise spectrum of transport current through quantum dot systems, and show that the realistic finite Coulomb interaction and finite bandwidth are manifested only with non-Markovian treatment. We demonstrate a number of non-Markovian characteristics of shot noise spectrum, including that due to finite bandwidth and that sensitive to and enhanced by the magnitude of Coulomb interaction., 8pages,3figures

In this paper, we develop a nonequilibrium theory for transient electron transport dynamics in nanostructures based on the Feynman-Vernon influence functional approach. We extend our previous work on the exact master equation describing the non-Markovian electron dynamics in the double dot [Phys. Rev. B78, 235311 (2008)] to the nanostructures in which the energy levels of the central region, the couplings to the leads and the external biases applied to leads are all time-dependent. We then derive nonperturbatively the exact transient current in terms of the reduced density matrix within the same framework. This provides an exact non-linear response theory for quantum transport processes with back-reaction effect from the contacts, including the non-Markovian quantum relaxation and dephasing, being fully taken into account. The nonequilibrium steady-state transport theory based on the Schwinger-Keldysh nonequilibrium Green function technique can be recovered as a long time limit. For a simple application, we present the analytical and numerical results of transient dynamics for the resonance tunneling nanoscale device with a Lorentzian-type spectral density and ac bias voltages, where the non-Markovian memory structure and non-linear response to the bias voltages in transport processes are demonstrated.

An accurate and efficient numerical approach is developed for the transient electronic dynamics of open quantum systems at low temperatures. The calculations are based on a formally exact hierarchical equations of motion quantum dissipation theory [J. S. Jin et al., J. Chem. Phys. 128, 234703 (2008)]. We propose a hybrid scheme that combines the Matsubara expansion technique and a frequency dispersion treatment to account for reservoir correlation functions. The new scheme not just admits various forms of reservoir spectral functions but also greatly reduces the computational cost of the resulting hierarchical equations, especially in the low temperature regime. Dynamical Kondo effects are obtained and the cotunneling induced Kondo transitions are resolved in the transient current in response to time-dependent external voltages.