A theoretical analysis of experimental open quantum dynamics

TL;DR

This paper provides a theoretical framework for quantum process tomography involving initially correlated system-environment states, analyzing how different preparation procedures affect experimental outcomes.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive theory for preparation procedures in open quantum systems, extending process tomography beyond uncorrelated initial states.

Findings

Analysis of stochastic and projective preparation procedures

Impact of initial correlations on quantum process tomography

Guidelines for experimental preparation of input states

Abstract

In recent years there has been a significant development of the dynamical map formalism for initially correlated states of a system and its environment. Based on some of these results, we study quantum process tomography for initially correlated states of the system and the environment. This is beyond the usual assumption that the state of the system and the environment are initially uncorrelated. Since quantum process tomography is an experimental procedure, we wind up having to study the role of preparation of input states for open quantum experiments. We work out a theory for the general preparation procedure, and study two preparation procedures in detail. In specific, we study the stochastic preparation procedure and the projective preparation procedure and apply them to quantum process tomography. The two preparation procedures describe the ways to uncorrelate.....