Towards a Theory of Metastability in Open Quantum Dynamics

Macieszczak, Katarzyna; Gu??, M?d?lin; Lesanovsky, Igor; Garrahan, Juan P.

Abstract

© 2016 American Physical Society. By generalizing concepts from classical stochastic dynamics, we establish the basis for a theory of metastability in Markovian open quantum systems. Partial relaxation into long-lived metastable states - distinct from the asymptotic stationary state - is a manifestation of a separation of time scales due to a splitting in the spectrum of the generator of the dynamics. We show here how to exploit this spectral structure to obtain a low dimensional approximation to the dynamics in terms of motion in a manifold of metastable states constructed from the low-lying eigenmatrices of the generator. We argue that the metastable manifold is in general composed of disjoint states, noiseless subsystems, and decoherence-free subspaces.

Citation

Macieszczak, K., Guţă, M., Lesanovsky, I., & Garrahan, J. P. (2016). Towards a Theory of Metastability in Open Quantum Dynamics. Physical Review Letters, 116(24), Article 240404. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.240404

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 6, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Jun 16, 2016
• Publication Date: Jun 16, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jul 8, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 8, 2016
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 116
• Issue: 24
• Article Number: 240404
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.240404
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/794810
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.240404
• Additional Information: ©2016 American Physical Society