Showing papers by "Tomaz Prosen published in 2003"

Fidelity and purity decay in weakly coupled composite systems

Abstract: We study the stability of unitary quantum dynamics of composite systems (for example: central system + environment) with respect to weak interaction between the two parts. Unified theoretical formalism is applied to study different physical situations: (i) coherence of a forward evolution as measured by the purity of the reduced density matrix, (ii) stability of time evolution with respect to small coupling between subsystems and (iii) Loschmidt echo measuring dynamical irreversibility. Stability has been measured either by fidelity of pure states of a composite system, or by the so-called reduced fidelity of reduced density matrices within a subsystem. Rigorous inequality among fidelity, reduced fidelity and purity is proved and a linear response theory is developed expressing these three quantities in terms of time correlation functions of the generator of interaction. The qualitatively different cases of regular (integrable) or mixing (chaotic in the classical limit) dynamics in each of the subsystems are discussed in detail. Theoretical results are demonstrated and confirmed in a numerical example of two coupled kicked tops.

Theory of quantum Loschmidt echoes

Abstract: In this paper we review our recent work on the theoretical approach to quantum Loschmidt echoes, i.e. various properties of the so called echo dynamics -- the composition of forward and backward time evolutions generated by two slightly different Hamiltonians, such as the state autocorrelation function (fidelity) and the purity of a reduced density matrix traced over a subsystem (purity fidelity). Our main theoretical result is a linear response formalism, expressing the fidelity and purity fidelity in terms of integrated time autocorrelation function of the generator of the perturbation. Surprisingly, this relation predicts that the decay of fidelity is the slower the faster the decay of correlations. In particular for a static (time-independent) perturbation, and for non-ergodic and non-mixing dynamics where asymptotic decay of correlations is absent, a qualitatively different and faster decay of fidelity is predicted on a time scale 1/delta as opposed to mixing dynamics where the fidelity is found to decay exponentially on a time-scale 1/delta^2, where delta is a strength of perturbation. A detailed discussion of a semi-classical regime of small effective values of Planck constant is given where classical correlation functions can be used to predict quantum fidelity decay. Note that the correct and intuitively expected classical stability behavior is recovered in the classical limit, as the perturbation and classical limits do not commute. The theoretical results are demonstrated numerically for two models, the quantized kicked top and the multi-level Jaynes Cummings model. Our method can for example be applied to the stability analysis of quantum computation and quantum information processing.

Quantum freeze of fidelity decay for a class of integrable dynamics

Abstract: We discuss quantum fidelity decay of classically regular dynamics, in particular for an important special case of a vanishing time averaged perturbation operator, i.e. vanishing expectation values of the perturbation in the eigenbasis of unperturbed dynamics. A complete semiclassical picture of this situation is derived in which we show that the quantum fidelity of individual coherent initial states exhibits three different regimes in time: (i) first it follows the corresponding classical fidelity up to time t1=hbar^(-1/2), (ii) then it freezes on a plateau of constant value, (iii) and after a time scale t_2=min[hbar^(1/2) delta^(-2),hbar^(-1/2) delta^(-1)] it exhibits fast ballistic decay as exp(-const. delta^4 t^2/hbar) where delta is a strength of perturbation. All the constants are computed in terms of classical dynamics for sufficiently small effective value hbar of the Planck constant. A similar picture is worked out also for general initial states, and specifically for random initial states, where t_1=1, and t_2=delta^(-1). This prolonged stability of quantum dynamics in the case of a vanishing time averaged perturbation could prove to be useful in designing quantum devices. Theoretical results are verified by numerical experiments on the quantized integrable top.

Wigner function statistics in classically chaotic systems

Abstract: We have studied statistical properties of the values of the Wigner function W(x) of 1D quantum maps on compact 2D phase space of finite area V. For this purpose we have defined a Wigner function probability distribution P(w) = (1/V) ∫ δ(w − W(x))dx, which has, by definition, fixed first and second moments. In particular, we concentrate on relaxation of time-evolving quantum states in terms of W(x), starting from a coherent state. We have shown that for a classically chaotic quantum counterpart the distribution P(w) in the semiclassical limit becomes a Gaussian distribution that is fully determined by the first two moments. Numerical simulations have been performed for the quantum sawtooth map and the quantized kicked top. In a quantum system with Hilbert space dimension N(~1/) the transition of P(w) to a Gaussian distribution was observed at times t ∝ log N. In addition, it has been shown that the statistics of Wigner functions of propagator eigenstates is Gaussian as well in the classically fully chaotic regime. We have also studied the structure of the nodal cells of the Wigner function, in particular the distribution of intersection points between the zero manifold and arbitrary straight lines.

Value Statistics of Chaotic Wigner Function

Abstract: We study Wigner function value statistics of classically chaotic quantum maps on compact 2D phase space. We show that the Wigner function statistics of a random state is a Gaussian, with the mean value becoming negligiblecompared to the width in the semiclassical limit. Using numerical example of quantized sawtooth map we demonstrate that the relaxation of time-dependent Wigner function statistics, starting from a coherent initial state, takes place on a logarithmically short ( log ) time scale.