Thermodynamic fingerprints of non-Markovianity in a system of coupled superconducting qubits

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates non-Markovian effects in superconducting qubits, showing how environmental temperature influences memory effects and demonstrating that average work can serve as a diagnostic for non-Markovianity.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous quantification of non-Markovianity in superconducting qubits and explores how temperature affects the memory effects and work dynamics.

Findings

Memory effects are influenced by environmental temperature.

Average work can diagnose non-Markovianity.

Memory effects suppress work performance.

Abstract

The exploitation and characterization of memory effects arising from the interaction between system and environment is a key prerequisite for quantum reservoir engineering beyond the standard Markovian limit. In this paper we investigate a prototype of non-Markovian dynamics experimentally implementable with superconducting qubits. We rigorously quantify non-Markovianity highlighting the effects of the environmental temperature on the Markovian to non-Markovian crossover. We investigate how memory effects influence, and specifically suppress, the ability to perform work on the driven qubit. We show that the average work performed on the qubit can be used as a diagnostic tool to detect the presence or absence of memory effects.