Sixth Open Quantum Meeting 

University of Manchester
April 16th 2019

Programme

11:00-11:30  Tea break

11:30-12:00  Conor McConnell (Manchester) 

12:00-12:30  Luis A. Correa (Nottingham)

12:30-13:00  Alessandro Romito (Lancaster)

13:00-14:00  Lunch 

14:00-14:30  Katarzyna Macieszczak (Cambridge)

14:30-15:00  Adam Stokes (Manchester)

15:00-15:30  Giorgio Zicari (Belfast)

15:30-16:00  Tea break 

16:00-16:30  Dominic Rouse (St. Andrews)

Meeting location
 
Niels Bohr meeting room, 6th Floor, Schuster Building

How to get there

See directions here: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/maps/
Abstracts

Adam Stokes (Manchester)

Ultrastrong time-dependent light-matter interactions are gauge-relative

Time-dependent Hamiltonians are a widespread means by which to describe controllable

experimental operations. In particular, control over light-matter interactions is vital for
numerous applications. Due to gauge-freedom, there are many different definitions of
light and matter as quantum subsystems. These definitions only coincide when the
interaction vanishes. Correspondingly, various forms of interaction are commonly found
within the literature. In contrast, justification for using a particular form is seldom found.
We show that in the absence of an argument to choose a particular gauge when
promoting the coupling parameter to a time-dependent function, the description that
results is essentially ambiguous. For sufficiently strong and non-adiabatic interactions,
the qualitative physical predictions of final subsystem properties, such as entanglement
and photon number, depend on the gauge chosen. This occurs even when the coupling
vanishes at the preparation and measurement stages of the protocol, at which times the
subsystems are unique and experimentally addressable. These findings are important
for all situations in which specific properties are sought through fast interaction
switching, as may occur for example, within quantum information, communication,
metrology, simulation, and control.

___________________________________________________________________
Conor McConnell (University of Manchester)
 
Thermoelectrics at Strong Electron-Phonon Coupling 

Molecular electronics is a rapidly developing field focused on using molecules as

the structural basis for electronic components. It is common in such devices for
the system of interest to couple simultaneously to multiple environments. Here
we consider a model comprised of a double quantum dot (or molecule) coupled
weakly to two electronic leads held at arbitrary bias voltage. The double quantum
dot is also coupled strongly to a phonon bath, which induces tunneling to
overcome an energetic barrier. The strong vibrational coupling limits the validity
of considering the bosonic and electronic environments simply as acting
additively. To overcome this, we implement a reaction coordinate mapping that
incorporates a collective phonon mode within our system. We then couple the
leads to this “augmented” system to accurately describe non-additive
contributions within our set-up. When these non-additive contributions are
correctly accounted for the current flow and output power of our thermoelectric
can be seen to improve beyond the standard weak-coupling treatment. However,
strong electron-phonon coupling also results in an energetic “cost”, which
prevents the device from achieving Carnot efficiency even for vanishing power.
___________________________________________________________________

Luis A. Correa (University of Nottingham)

 
Pushing the limits of the reaction coordinate mapping 

The reaction coordinate mapping is a useful technique to study quantum

dissipative dynamics into structured environments. By redefining the
system-environment boundary to include the most relevant external degrees of
freedom into a larger `augmented system’, it manages to reduce the
environmental correlation times. If, in addition, the coupling of the augmented
system to the residual environment is weak, a standard Markovian master
equation may be used, thus considerably simplifying the problem. But, what if the 
residual dissipation is strong? Here we consider an exactly solvable model for heat
transport—a two-node linear quantum wire connecting two reservoirs at different
temperatures. We allow for a structured spectral density at the interface with one
of the baths and perform the reaction coordinate mapping, writing a perturbative
master equation for the augmented system. Strikingly, we find that the stationary
state of the original system is accurately reproduced by such weak-coupling
treatment, even when the residual dissipation after the mapping is extremely
strong. On the flip side, we show how the master equation can, nonetheless, lead
to large errors in the calculation of the stationary heat current across the wire.
We also study the dynamics of the system and note that while its short-time
behaviour and steady state are robust under small frequency shifts, the evolution
at intermediate times can be seriously affected. These observations become
particularly important when using the reaction coordinate mapping to study the
largely unexplored strong coupling regime in quantum thermodynamics and
quantum transport.
___________________________________________________________________

Alessandro Romito (Lancaster)

Entanglement transition from variable-strength weak measurements

Generic many-body quantum systems obey the eigenstate thermalization

hypothesis (ETH), according to which they establish the characteristics of
thermal equilibrium in a finite time. They are characterized by states following
an extensive scaling of their entanglement entropy (volume law). However,
transitions to a localized phase with sub-extensive entanglement scaling are
possible, e.g. by local disorder as in Many-body localization (MBL). The features
of this entanglement transition in open quantum systems is an open question.
Here we study the entanglement scaling transition in a many-body system with
local random interactions subject to local measurements of variable strength. We
show that the measurements induce a quantum phase transition from an ergodic
thermal phase with a large entropy to a nonergodic localized phase with a small
entropy, but only if the measurement strength exceeds a critical value. We
demonstrate this effect for a one-dimensional quantum circuit evolving under
random unitary transformations and generic positive operator-valued
measurements of variable strength. By employing data collapse and studying the
enhanced fluctuations at the transition, we obtain a consistent phase boundary in
the space of the measurement strength and the measurement probability, clearly
demonstrating a critical value of the measurement strength below which the
system is always ergodic, irrespective of the measurement probability. These
findings provide guidance for quantum engineering of many-body systems by
controlling their environment.

___________________________________________________________________

Katarzyna Macieszczak (University of Cambridge)

 
Dissipative quantum state preparation and metastability  
in two-photon micromasers 

We study the preparation of coherent quantum states in two-photon

micromasers for applications in quantum metrology. We consider atoms passing
through a cavity and interacting with its field via two-photon Jaynes--Cummings
Hamiltonian. This type of effective interaction can be achieved with the model
featuring at least (5+1)-level atoms where the dynamical and the static Stark
shifts are eliminated in the far detuned limit, in contrast to the conventional
two-photon micromasers based on three-level atoms. In this regime the cavity
dynamics features pure odd and even steady states, which depend both on the
time-length of the atom-cavity interaction and on the initial atomic state. We
derive their analytic form, and show they include the cat states recovered in the
limit of weak atom-cavity couplings, as well as states reminiscent of grid states.
Testing the usefulness of the generated states for phase estimation, we find atom
preparations and interaction time-lengths leading to the quantum Fisher
information (QFI) above the standard limit. To account for realistic imperfections,
we consider single-photon losses from the cavity and higher-order corrections to
the far-detuned limit, which result in metastability of formerly stationary cavity
states, and long-time dynamics with a unique mixed steady state. Despite being
mixed, we find the steady state can still feature the QFI above the standard limit.  

___________________________________________________________________

Dominic Rouse (University of St. Andrews)

Dark state protection in a realistic dimer model 

 
Dark state protection has been proposed as a mechanism to increase the power
output of light harvesting devices by reducing the rate of radiative recombination.
Indeed many theoretical studies have reported increased power outputs in dimer
systems which use quantum interference to generate dark states. These models
have typically been restricted to particular geometries and to weakly coupled
vibrational baths. We consider the experimentally-relevant strong vibrational
coupling regime with no geometric restrictions on the dimer. We analyze how
dark states can be formed in the dimer by numerically minimizing the emission
rate of the lowest energy excited eigenstate, and then calculate the power output
of the molecules with these dark states. We find that there are two distinct types
of dark states depending on whether the monomers form homodimers, where
energy splittings and dipole strengths are identical, or heterodimers, where there
is some difference. Homodimers, which exploit destructive quantum interference,
produce high power outputs but strong phonon couplings and perturbations from
ideal geometries are extremely detrimental. Heterodimers, which are closer to the
classical picture of a distinct donor and acceptor molecule, produce an
intermediate power output that is relatively stable to these changes. The strong
vibrational couplings typically found in organic molecules will suppress
destructive interference and thus favour the dark-state enhancement offered by
heterodimers.