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Quasilocality and efficient simulation of Markovian quantum dynamics
Publikationstyp
Journal Article
Date Issued
2012-06-05
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Journal
Volume
108
Issue
23
Article Number
230504
Citation
Physical Review Letters 108 (23): 230504 (2012-06-05)
Publisher DOI
Scopus ID
We consider open many-body systems governed by a time-dependent quantum master equation with short-range interactions. With a generalized Lieb-Robinson bound, we show that the evolution in this very generic framework is quasilocal; i.e., the evolution of observables can be approximated by implementing the dynamics only in a vicinity of the observables' support. The precision increases exponentially with the diameter of the considered subsystem. Hence, time evolution can be simulated on classical computers with a cost that is independent of the system size. Providing error bounds for Trotter decompositions, we conclude that the simulation on a quantum computer is additionally efficient in time. For experiments and simulations in the Schrödinger picture, our result can be used to rigorously bound finite-size effects.