Quantum non-Markovian "casual bystander" environments

TL;DR

This paper explores a broad class of quantum environments that induce memory effects without affecting the environment's degrees of freedom, using a bipartite framework to analyze their properties and implications.

Contribution

It introduces the most general interactions leading to quantum non-Markovian 'casual bystander' environments and studies their properties through various analytical and operational methods.

Findings

Memory effects occur without environment disturbance.

System-environment correlations are key to understanding these effects.

Operational detection methods are developed for these non-Markovian environments.

Abstract

Quantum memory effects can be induced even when the degrees of freedom associated to the environment are not affected at all during the system evolution. In this paper, based on a bipartite representation of the system-environment dynamics, we found the more general interactions that lead to this class of quantum non-Markovian "casual bystander environments." General properties of the resulting dynamics are studied with focus on the system-environment correlations, a collisional measurement-based representation, and the quantum regression hypothesis. Memory effects are also characterized through an operational approach, which in turn allows to detect when the studied properties apply. Single and multipartite qubits dynamics support and exemplify the developed results.