On quantum to classical comparison for Davies generators

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Basso, Joao, Ganguly, Shirshendu, Sinclair, Alistair, Srivastava, Nikhil, Stier, Zachary, Vuong, Thuy-Duong
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Basso, Joao
Ganguly, Shirshendu
Sinclair, Alistair
Srivastava, Nikhil
Stier, Zachary
Vuong, Thuy-Duong
author_facet Basso, Joao
Ganguly, Shirshendu
Sinclair, Alistair
Srivastava, Nikhil
Stier, Zachary
Vuong, Thuy-Duong
contents Despite extensive study, our understanding of quantum Markov chains remains far less complete than that of their classical counterparts. [Temme'13] observed that the Davies Lindbladian, a well-studied model of quantum Markov dynamics, contains an embedded classical Markov generator, raising the natural question of how the convergence properties of the quantum and classical dynamics are related. While [Temme'13] showed that the spectral gap of the Davies Lindbladian can be much smaller than that of the embedded classical generator for certain highly structured Hamiltonians, we show that if the spectrum of the Hamiltonian does not contain long arithmetic progressions, then the two spectral gaps must be comparable. As a consequence, we prove that for a large class of Hamiltonians, including those obtained by perturbing a fixed Hamiltonian with a generic external field, the quantum spectral gap remains within a constant factor of the classical spectral gap. Our result aligns with physical intuition and enables the application of classical Markov chain techniques to the quantum setting. The proof is based on showing that any ``off-diagonal'' eigenvector of the Davies generator can be used to construct an observable which commutes with the Hamiltonian and has a Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient which can be upper bounded in terms of that of the original eigenvector's Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient. Thus, a spectral gap for such observables implies a spectral gap for the full Davies generator.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_07267
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On quantum to classical comparison for Davies generators
Basso, Joao
Ganguly, Shirshendu
Sinclair, Alistair
Srivastava, Nikhil
Stier, Zachary
Vuong, Thuy-Duong
Quantum Physics
Data Structures and Algorithms
Mathematical Physics
Probability
Despite extensive study, our understanding of quantum Markov chains remains far less complete than that of their classical counterparts. [Temme'13] observed that the Davies Lindbladian, a well-studied model of quantum Markov dynamics, contains an embedded classical Markov generator, raising the natural question of how the convergence properties of the quantum and classical dynamics are related. While [Temme'13] showed that the spectral gap of the Davies Lindbladian can be much smaller than that of the embedded classical generator for certain highly structured Hamiltonians, we show that if the spectrum of the Hamiltonian does not contain long arithmetic progressions, then the two spectral gaps must be comparable. As a consequence, we prove that for a large class of Hamiltonians, including those obtained by perturbing a fixed Hamiltonian with a generic external field, the quantum spectral gap remains within a constant factor of the classical spectral gap. Our result aligns with physical intuition and enables the application of classical Markov chain techniques to the quantum setting. The proof is based on showing that any ``off-diagonal'' eigenvector of the Davies generator can be used to construct an observable which commutes with the Hamiltonian and has a Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient which can be upper bounded in terms of that of the original eigenvector's Lindbladian Rayleigh quotient. Thus, a spectral gap for such observables implies a spectral gap for the full Davies generator.
title On quantum to classical comparison for Davies generators
topic Quantum Physics
Data Structures and Algorithms
Mathematical Physics
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07267