Nanodevices exploiting quantum effects are critically important elements of future quantum technologies (QT), but their real-world performance is strongly limited by decoherence arising from local `environmental' interactions. Compounding this, as devices become more complex, i.e. contain multiple functional units, the `local' environments begin to overlap, creating the possibility of environmentally mediated decoherence phenomena on new time-and-length scales. Such complex and inherently non-Markovian dynamics could present a challenge for scaling up QT, but – on the other hand – the ability of environments to transfer `signals' and energy might also enable sophisticated spatiotemporal coordination of inter-component processes, as is suggested to happen in biological nanomachines, like enzymes and photosynthetic proteins. Exploiting numerically exact many body methods (tensor networks) we study a fully quantum model that allows us to explore how propagating environmental dynamics can instigate and direct the evolution of spatially remote, non-interacting quantum systems. We demonstrate how energy dissipated into the environment can be remotely harvested to create transient excited/reactive states, and also identify how reorganisation triggered by system excitation can qualitatively and reversibly alter the `downstream' kinetics of a `functional' quantum system. With access to complete system-environment wave functions, we elucidate the microscopic processes underlying these phenomena, providing new insight into how they could be exploited for energy efficient quantum devices.

中文翻译：

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从非马尔可夫耗散到量子纳米器件的时空控制

利用量子效应的纳米器件是未来量子技术（QT）至关重要的元素，但它们在现实世界中的性能受到局部“环境”相互作用产生的退相干的严重限制。更复杂的是，随着设备变得更加复杂，即包含多个功能单元，“局部”环境开始重叠，从而在新的时间和长度尺度上产生环境介导的退相干现象的可能性。这种复杂且本质上非马尔可夫的动态可能对扩大 QT 提出挑战，但另一方面，环境传输“信号”和能量的能力也可能实现组件间过程的复杂时空协调，正如所建议的那样发生在生物纳米机器中，例如酶和光合蛋白质。利用数值精确的多体方法（张量网络），我们研究了一个完全量子模型，该模型使我们能够探索传播环境动力学如何激发和指导空间遥远、非相互作用的量子系统的演化。我们演示了如何远程收集消散到环境中的能量以创建瞬态激发/反应状态，并确定系统激发触发的重组如何定性且可逆地改变“功能”量子系统的“下游”动力学。通过获得完整的系统环境波函数，我们阐明了这些现象背后的微观过程，为如何将它们用于节能量子设备提供了新的见解。