Quantum simulations of dissipative dynamics: time-dependence instead of size

Benjamin Dive, Florian Mintert, Daniel Burgarth

Published 2015-03-03Version 1

We introduce an approach for quantum simulations of open system dynamics in terms of an environment of minimal size. The use of time-dependent control Hamiltonians enables the implementation of a continuous-time simulation, despite the finite environment. We find necessary and sufficient conditions for this Hamiltonian to be well behaved and, when these are not met, we show that there exists an approximate Hamiltonian that is.