Maximal speed of propagation in open quantum systems

  • Sébastien Breteaux

    University of Lorraine, Metz, France
  • Jérémy Faupin

    Université de Lorraine, Metz, France
  • Marius Lemm

    University of Tübingen, Germany
  • Israel Michael Sigal

    University of Toronto, Canada
Maximal speed of propagation in open quantum systems cover
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Abstract

We prove a maximal velocity bound for the dynamics of Markovian open quantum systems. The dynamics is described by one-parameter semigroups of quantum channels satisfying the von Neumann–Lindblad equation. Our result says that dynamically evolving states are contained inside a suitable light cone up to polynomial errors. We also give a bound on the slope of the light cone, i.e. the maximal propagation speed. The result implies an upper bound on the speed of propagation of local perturbations of stationary states in open quantum systems.