Decoherence and Landauer's Principle in Qubit-Cavity Quantum-Field-Theory Interaction

TL;DR

This paper explores quantum decoherence and Landauer's principle within qubit-cavity quantum field interactions, analyzing how energy and coherence evolve during decoherence with different initial states and interaction Hamiltonians.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of decoherence processes in qubit-cavity QFT, highlighting the interplay between energy change, entropy, and unitarity under various Hamiltonian conditions.

Findings

Decoherence increases von Neumann entropy of the system.

Energy and coherence can change simultaneously depending on the Hamiltonian.

Landauer's principle holds in all examined scenarios.

Abstract

We consider quantum decoherence and Landauer's principle in qubit-cavity quantum field theory (QFT) interaction, treating the qubit as the system and cavity QFT as the environment. In particular, we investigate the changes that occur in the system with a pure initial state and environment during the decoherence process, with or without energy dissipation, and compare the results with the case in which the initial state of the system is a mixed state and thus decoherence is absent. When we choose an interaction Hamiltonian such that the energy and coherence of the system change simultaneously, the population change of the system and the energy change are the same when the initial state is mixed. However, the decoherence terms increase the von Neumann entropy of the system. In this case the energy change and decoherence of the system are not independent physical processes. The decoherence process maintains unitarity. On the other hand, if the interaction Hamiltonian does not change the energy of the system, there is only the decoherence effect. The environment will be a distribution in the basis of the displaced number state and always increases the energy. Landauer's principle is satisfied in both cases.