Section: New Results

Minimizing decoherence on target in bipartite open quantum systems

Participants: Paolo Forni and Alain Sarlette

We consider a target quantum system, coupled to an auxiliary quantum system which dissipates rapidly at somewhat adjustable rates. The goal is to minimize the dissipation induced on the target system by this coupling. In [27], we use explicit model reduction formulas to express this as a quadratic optimization problem. We prove that maybe counterintuitively, when the auxiliary system dissipates along Hermitian (entropy-increasing) channels, the minimum induced dissipation is reached by maximizing the dissipation rate of the auxiliary system. This may be interpreted as a dynamical decoupling among the target system and the auxiliary one, induced not by standard Hamiltonian control acting on the target, but by noise acting on the environment. This link has been pursued with PhD student Michiel Burgelman and should lead to further results next year.