Environment-induced sudden change of coherence in quantum systems

Abstract

Manipulating dynamical evolution is an important task in quantum information. The sudden death phenomenon (SDP), which is predicted to be unattainable beyond entanglement [T. Yu and J. H. Eberly, Sudden death of entanglement, Science 323, 598 (2009)], would be an especially surprising feature in quantum coherence. In this paper, we modulate the spatial modes of photons and build a spatially inclined channel using a series of specially made quartz plate pairs. Within this channel, sudden changes in coherence occur in open-quantum systems. We, then, describe the SDP within a general theoretical framework of sudden quantum-coherence changes and by defining the $n\mathrm{th}$-order sudden coherence change. Moreover, by adding non-Markovian noise, we find that coherence can rebirth after a sudden death. We further compare the sudden change features in coherence and quantum entanglement. We find that both coherence and entanglement perform identical dynamical processes upon Bell diagonal states, although their dynamical characteristics change when the initial state is partially entangled. Our results provide insights into the sudden change phenomena of quantum correlations beyond entanglement along with intriguing perspectives on quantum coherence dynamics.