Environment-assisted quantum transport in a 10-qubit network

The way in which energy is transported through an interacting system governs fundamental properties in nature such as thermal and electric conductivity or phase changes. Remarkably, environmental noise can enhance the transport, an effect known as environment-assisted quantum transport (ENAQT). In t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Maier, Christine (Author) , Hauke, Philipp (Author)
Format: Article (Journal)
Language:English
Published: 8 February 2019
In: Physical review letters
Year: 2019, Volume: 122, Issue: 5
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.050501
Online Access:Verlag, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.050501
Verlag, Volltext: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.050501
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Author Notes:Christine Maier, Tiff Brydges, Petar Jurcevic, Nils Trautmann, Cornelius Hempel, Ben P. Lanyon, Philipp Hauke, Rainer Blatt, and Christian F. Roos
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Summary:The way in which energy is transported through an interacting system governs fundamental properties in nature such as thermal and electric conductivity or phase changes. Remarkably, environmental noise can enhance the transport, an effect known as environment-assisted quantum transport (ENAQT). In this Letter, we study ENAQT in a network of coupled spins subject to engineered static disorder and temporally varying dephasing noise. The interacting spin network is realized in a chain of trapped atomic ions, and energy transport is represented by the transfer of electronic excitation between ions. With increasing noise strength, we observe a crossover from coherent dynamics and Anderson localization to ENAQT and finally a suppression of transport due to the quantum Zeno effect. We find that in the regime where ENAQT is most effective, the transport is mainly diffusive, displaying coherences only at very short times. Further, we show that dephasing characterized by non-Markovian noise can maintain coherences longer than white noise dephasing, with a strong influence of the spectral structure on the transport efficiency. Our approach represents a controlled and scalable way to investigate quantum transport in many-body networks under static disorder and dynamic noise.
Item Description:Gesehen am 15.08.2019
Physical Description:Online Resource
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.050501