Photonic non-Markovianity identification by quantum process capabilities of non-CP processes

Abstract

A Markovian quantum process can be arbitrarily divided into two or more legitimate completely-positive (CP) subprocesses. When at least one non-CP process exists among the divided processes, the dynamics is considered non-Markovian. However, how to utilize minimum experimental efforts, without examining all process input states and using entanglement resources, to identify or measure non-Markovianity is still being determined. Herein, we propose a method to quantify non-CP processes for identifying and measuring non-Markovianity without the burden of state optimization and entanglement. This relies on the non-CP processes as new quantum process capabilities and can be systematically implemented by quantum process tomography. We additionally provide an approach for witnessing non-Markovianity by analyzing at least four system states without process tomography. We faithfully demonstrate that our method can be explicitly implemented using all-optical setups and applied to identify the non-Markovianity of single-photon and two-photon dynamics in birefringent crystals. Our results can also be used to explore non-Markovianity in other dynamical systems where process or state tomography is implementable.