Global zero-excitation state preparation through subsystem cooling

Abstract

Preparing interacting quantum systems in low-energy or ground states is a fundamental task in quantum simulation and quantum information processing. In realistic settings, dissipation and active cooling can typically be engineered only on a limited subset of the system. We study the dissipative dynamics of excitation-number conserving quantum systems governed by a GKLS master equation with local jump operators acting on a subset of qubits. We establish sufficient conditions under which such localized dissipation drives the full system to a unique globally attractive zero-excitation state. In particular, we prove that if the Hamiltonian generates excitation transfer described by a graph for which the dissipative subsystem forms a zero forcing set, then the zero-excitation state is the unique globally attractive stationary state. When this state coincides with a ground state of the Hamiltonian, the same mechanism realizes ground-state cooling. Our results provide a graph-theoretic criterion for global state preparation from localized dissipation, which we illustrate using a nearest-neighbor Heisenberg spin chain. For this model, a reduction to the single-excitation sector further yields a scaling estimate with the length of the chain which indicates efficient cooling.