Tightening Quantum Speed Limits for Almost All States

Observation of minimal and maximal speed limits for few and many-body states

Tracking the time evolution of a quantum state allows one to verify the thermalization rate or the propagation speed of correlations in generic quantum systems. Inspired by the energy-time uncertainty principle, bounds have been demonstrated on the maximal speed at which a quantum state can change, resulting in immediate and practical tasks. Based on a programmable superconducting quantum processor, we test the dynamics of various emulated quantum mechanical systems encompassing single- and many-body states. We show that one can test the known quantum speed limits and that modifying a single Hamiltonian parameter allows the observation of the crossover of the different bounds on the dynamics. We also unveil the observation of minimal quantum speed limits in addition to more common maximal ones, i.e., the lowest rate of change of a unitarily evolved quantum state. Our results show a comprehensive experimental characterization of quantum speed limits and enhance the understanding for their subsequent study in engineered non-unitary conditions.

Stronger Quantum Speed Limit for Mixed Quantum States

In this paper, we derive a quantum speed limit for unitary evolution for the case of mixed quantum states using the stronger uncertainty relation for mixed quantum states. This bound can be optimized over different choices of Hermitian operators for a better bound. We illustrate this with some examples and show its better performance with respect to three existing bounds for mixed quantum states.

Topological Speed Limit

Any physical system evolves at a finite speed that is constrained not only by the energetic cost but also by the topological structure of the underlying dynamics. In this Letter, by considering such structural information, we derive a unified topological speed limit for the evolution of physical states using an optimal transport approach. We prove that the minimum time required for changing states is lower bounded by the discrete Wasserstein distance, which encodes the topological information of the system, and the time-averaged velocity. The bound obtained is tight and applicable to a wide range of dynamics, from deterministic to stochastic, and classical to quantum systems. In addition, the bound provides insight into the design principles of the optimal process that attains the maximum speed. We demonstrate the application of our results to chemical reaction networks and interacting many-body quantum systems.

Quantum Speed-Up Induced by the Quantum Phase Transition in a Nonlinear Dicke Model with Two Impurity Qubits

In this paper, we investigate the effect of the Dicke quantum phase transition on the speed of evolution of the system dynamics. At the phase transition point, the symmetry associated with the system parity operator begins to break down. By comparing the magnitudes of the two types of quantum speed limit times, we find that the quantum speed limit time of the system is described by one of the quantum speed limit times, whether in the normal or superradiant phase. We find that, in the normal phase, the strength of the coupling between the optical field and the atoms has little effect on the dynamical evolution speed of the system. However, in the superradiant phase, a stronger atom–photon coupling strength can accelerate the system dynamics’ evolution. Finally, we investigate the effect of the entanglement of the initial state of the system on the speed of evolution of the system dynamics. We find that in the normal phase, the entanglement of the initial state of the system has almost no effect on the system dynamics’ evolution speed. However, in the superradiant phase, larger entanglement of the system can accelerate the evolution of the system dynamics. Furthermore, we verify the above conclusions by the actual evolution of the system.

Witnessing localization of a quantum state via quantum speed limits in a driven avoided-level crossing system

In this work, we investigate the witnessing of the localization of quantum states through quantum speed limits (QSLs) in a two-level driven avoided-level crossing system. As the characteristic natures of the localized quantum states, the QSL presents the periodic oscillations and coherence. The coherence partition of QSL is much bigger than the population partition of QSL. Our study gives us the possibilities to manipulate dynamics of quantum states locally by employing the coherent destruction of tunneling, which is significant in quantum information process. In addition, we analyze the effects of the rotating-wave approximation and the generalized Van Vleck approach on QSL and show that they wipe out the quantum coherence.

Observing crossover between quantum speed limits

Quantum mechanics sets fundamental limits on how fast quantum states can be transformed in time. Two well-known quantum speed limits are the Mandelstam-Tamm and the Margolus-Levitin bounds, which relate the maximum speed of evolution to the system’s energy uncertainty and mean energy, respectively. Here, we test concurrently both limits in a multilevel system by following the motion of a single atom in an optical trap using fast matter wave interferometry. We find two different regimes: one where the Mandelstam-Tamm limit constrains the evolution at all times, and a second where a crossover to the Margolus-Levitin limit occurs at longer times. We take a geometric approach to quantify the deviation from the speed limit, measuring how much the quantum evolution deviates from the geodesic path in the Hilbert space of the multilevel system. Our results are important to understand the ultimate performance of quantum computing devices and related advanced quantum technologies.

Quantum Speed Limit Quantified by the Changing Rate of Phase

The quantum speed limit is important in determining the minimum evolution time of a quantum system, and thus is essential for quantum community. In this Letter, we derive a novel unified quantum speed limit bound for Hermitian and non-Hermitian quantum systems. The bound is quantified by the changing rate of phase of the quantum system, which represents the transmission mode of the quantum states over their evolution. The bound leads to further insights beyond the previous bounds on concrete evolution modes of the quantum system, such as horizontal or parallel transition or horizontal joining of the two quantum states in Hilbert space. The bound is linked to the feasibility of the evolutions of the state vectors, and provides a tighter upper bound. In addition, the generalized Margolus-Levitin bound is discussed.

Energy-Constrained Discrimination of Unitaries, Quantum Speed Limits, and a Gaussian Solovay-Kitaev Theorem

We investigate the energy-constrained (EC) diamond norm distance between unitary channels acting on possibly infinite-dimensional quantum systems, and establish a number of results. First, we prove that optimal EC discrimination between two unitary channels does not require the use of any entanglement. Extending a result by Acín, we also show that a finite number of parallel queries suffices to achieve zero error discrimination even in this EC setting. Second, we employ EC diamond norms to study a novel type of quantum speed limits, which apply to pairs of quantum dynamical semigroups. We expect these results to be relevant for benchmarking internal dynamics of quantum devices. Third, we establish a version of the Solovay-Kitaev theorem that applies to the group of Gaussian unitaries over a finite number of modes, with the approximation error being measured with respect to the EC diamond norm relative to the photon number Hamiltonian.

Probing Quantum Speed Limits with Ultracold Gases

Quantum speed limits (QSLs) rule the minimum time for a quantum state to evolve into a distinguishable state in an arbitrary physical process. These fundamental results constrain a notion of distance traveled by the quantum state, known as the Bures angle, in terms of the speed of evolution set by nonadiabatic energy fluctuations. I theoretically propose how to measure QSLs in an ultracold quantum gas confined in a time-dependent harmonic trap. In this highly-dimensional system of continuous variables, quantum tomography is prohibited. Yet, QSLs can be probed whenever the dynamics is self-similar by measuring as a function of time the cloud size of the ultracold gas. This makes it possible to determine the Bures angle and energy fluctuations, as I discuss for various ultracold atomic systems.

Bounding generalized relative entropies: Nonasymptotic quantum speed limits

Information theory has become an increasingly important research field to better understand quantum mechanics. Noteworthy, it covers both foundational and applied perspectives, also offering a common technical language to study a variety of research areas. Remarkably, one of the key information-theoretic quantities is given by the relative entropy, which quantifies how difficult is to tell apart two probability distributions, or even two quantum states. Such a quantity rests at the core of fields like metrology, quantum thermodynamics, quantum communication, and quantum information. Given this broadness of applications, it is desirable to understand how this quantity changes under a quantum process. By considering a general unitary channel, we establish a bound on the generalized relative entropies (Rényi and Tsallis) between the output and the input of the channel. As an application of our bounds, we derive a family of quantum speed limits based on relative entropies. Possible connections between this family with thermodynamics, quantum coherence, asymmetry, and single-shot information theory are briefly discussed.

Quantum speed limit based on the bound of Bures angle

In this paper, we investigate the unified bound of quantum speed limit time in open systems based on the modified Bures angle. This bound is applied to the damped Jaynes-Cummings model and the dephasing model, and the analytical quantum speed limit time is obtained for both models. As an example, the maximum coherent qubit state with white noise is chosen as the initial states for the damped Jaynes-Cummings model. It is found that the quantum speed limit time in both the non-Markovian and the Markovian regimes can be decreased by the white noise compared with the pure state. In addition, for the dephasing model, we find that the quantum speed limit time is not only related to the coherence of initial state and non-Markovianity, but also dependent on the population of initial excited state.

Orthogonality Catastrophe as a Consequence of the Quantum Speed Limit

A remarkable feature of quantum many-body systems is the orthogonality catastrophe that describes their extensively growing sensitivity to local perturbations and plays an important role in condensed matter physics. Here we show that the dynamics of the orthogonality catastrophe can be fully characterized by the quantum speed limit and, more specifically, that any quenched quantum many-body system, whose variance in ground state energy scales with the system size, exhibits the orthogonality catastrophe. Our rigorous findings are demonstrated by two paradigmatic classes of many-body systems-the trapped Fermi gas and the long-range interacting Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick spin model.

Distinct Bound of the Quantum Speed Limit via the Gauge Invariant Distance

We derive a distinct bound of the quantum speed limit for a non-Hermitian quantum system by employing the gauge invariant and geometric natures of quantum mechanics. The bound is of geometric properties since it relates to the geometric phase of the quantum system, and it is tighter than the Mandelstam-Tamm and Margolus-Levitin bounds in some cases. Also, by making the geodesic assumption, the analog of the Margolus-Levitin bound is derived for the time-dependent (non-)Hermitian quantum system. These two bounds reflect the impacts of the transmission modes of the state vectors on the evolution path in the manifold.

Entropic Characterization of Quantum States with Maximal Evolution under Given Energy Constraints

A measure D [ t 1 , t 2 ] for the amount of dynamical evolution exhibited by a quantum system during a time interval [ t 1 , t 2 ] is defined in terms of how distinguishable from each other are, on average, the states of the system at different times. We investigate some properties of the measure D showing that, for increasing values of the interval's duration, the measure quickly reaches an asymptotic value given by the linear entropy of the energy distribution associated with the system's (pure) quantum state. This leads to the formulation of an entropic variational problem characterizing the quantum states that exhibit the largest amount of dynamical evolution under energy constraints given by the expectation value of the energy.