Quantum Liouvillian Tomography

Abstract: Characterization of near-term quantum computing platforms requires the ability to capture and quantify dissipative effects. This is an inherently challenging task, as these effects are multifaceted, spanning a broad spectrum from Markovian to strongly non-Markovian dynamics. We introduce Quantum Liouvillian Tomography (QLT), a protocol to capture and quantify non-Markovian effects in time-continuous quantum dynamics. The protocol leverages gradient-based quantum process tomography to reconstruct dynamical maps and utilizes regression over the derivatives of Pauli string probability distributions to extract the Liouvillian governing the dynamics. We benchmark the protocol using synthetic data and quantify its accuracy in recovering Hamiltonians, jump operators, and dissipation rates for two-qubit systems. Finally, we apply QLT to analyze the evolution of an idling two-qubit system implemented on a superconducting quantum platform to extract characteristics of Hamiltonian and dissipative components and, as a result, detect inherently non-Markovian dynamics. Our work introduces the first protocol capable of retrieving generators of generic open quantum evolution from experimental data, thus enabling more precise characterization of many-body non-Markovian effects in near-term quantum computing platforms.