All-optical implementation of collision-based evolutions of open quantum systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces an optical setup that simulates collision-based open quantum system dynamics, including both Markovian and non-Markovian behaviors, using a photon circulating in a multipass interferometer.

Contribution

It presents a novel optical scheme for implementing and controlling non-Markovian quantum evolutions in a highly stable and configurable manner.

Findings

Successfully simulated Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics

Quantified information backflow via entanglement evolution

Demonstrated the versatility of the optical setup

Abstract

We present a new optical scheme enabling the implementation of highly stable and configurable non-Markovian dynamics. Here one photon qubit can circulate in a multipass bulk geometry consisting of two concatenated Sagnac interferometers to simulate the so called collisional model, where the system interacts at discrete times with a vacuum environment. We show the optical features of our apparatus and three different implementations of it, replicating a pure Markovian scenario and two non-Markovian ones, where we quantify the information backflow by tracking the evolution of the initial entanglement between the system photon and an ancillary one.