To investigate the therapeutic effects of cyclodextrin on the development of atherosclerosis in rabbits, we evaluated the effects of (2-hydroxypropyl)-β-cyclodextrin (HPβCD) therapy on the organ coefficient, lipid profiles, inflammatory cytokines, and atherosclerotic plaques in rabbits fed a high-fat diet. Our results demonstrated that HPβCD therapy reduced plasma triglyceride levels and inflammatory cytokine levels but increased plasma high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. HPβCD therapy produced a significant decrease in the atherosclerotic lesion area and reduced macrophage and collagen content in the lesions. The expression levels of inflammatory genes in aortic plaques were significantly reduced by HPβCD treatment, but the expression of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters A1 (ABCA1) and G1 (ABCG1) in aortic plaques and livers increased significantly. HPβCD therapy may produce additional antiatherosclerotic benefits likely via increasing high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels.

In this paper, we report findings of nonstationary behavior observed in a fully connected qubit network, utilizing a random unitary evolution model in open quantum system theory. The environmental effect is reflected in the partial swap interaction between pairs of qubits with a certain probability. Our study begins with a simple Ising-type Hamiltonian and through many iterations of random unitary evolution, a nonstationary oscillatory state may arise, which encodes certain memory of the initial state. The nontrivial periodic motion of some local observables is indicative of a continuous time crystal phase. We also explore the extension of our study to other types of Hamiltonians and demonstrate that this nonstationary behavior is widespread in our model due to the generalized dynamical symmetry. Remarkably, both theoretical and numerical analysis support the robustness of the constructed time crystal phase to most types of noise. Our research provides a perspective for constructing the time-crystal phase in an open system model.

In this research we analyze two models using the tensor network algorithm. The quantum correlations of a two-qubit system are first studied in different bosonic reservoirs. Both equilibrium and nonequilibrium scenarios are discussed. Non-Markovian effects can improve the survival time of the quantum correlations significantly and weaken the decoherence effect. Non-Markovian dynamics with existing memory can lead to entanglement rebirth in specific scenarios instead of the eventual entanglement decay or death seen in memoryless Markovian cases. The system reaches a steady state quickest in sub-Ohmic reservoirs and shows the most apparent non-Markovian behavior in super-Ohmic reservoirs. The Markovian approximation used in this paper is superior to that in the Bloch-Redfield master equation. The entanglement dynamics behaves similarly under different approaches when the system-bath coupling is weak and the memory effect is significant when the system-bath coupling is strong. We study not only the impact of the environment on quantum correlations, but also how to protect quantum correlations. Starting from a state in which the two ends are maximally entangled, a one-dimensional Aubry-André chain model is also studied. We identify distinct phases by monitoring the imbalance dynamics. When the chain is closed, the imbalance dynamics behaves differently in various phases and so does the entanglement evolution between the chain's ends. When the first site couples to a bath, we find that the imbalance dynamics can still be an effective indicator to differentiate various phases in an early evolution stage since the imbalance dynamics is only remarkably affected at relatively high temperatures. The distribution of the eigenenergy of the system can account for it. The entanglement of the chain ends decays rapidly in all phases due to one of the ends being coupled to the bath directly. However, the entanglement of the chain ends will persist for a perceptible amount of time in the localization phase if the bath is coupled to the middle site of the chain. Our research shows that one can utilize the disordered environment as a buffer to protect quantum correlations.

We quantify the quantum correlations between two accelerated detectors coupled to a scalar field in a cavity. It has been realized that an accelerated detector will experience a thermal bath, which is termed the Unruh effect. We examine the similarities and differences for quantum correlations regarding either temperature or acceleration. As the accelerations (respective temperatures) of the detectors increase, the entanglement decreases to zero at some instant but the mutual information (respective discord) can be amplified. As the accelerations increase but are in opposite directions, the quantum correlations decay. Importantly, we also reveal that larger quantum correlations can appear in certain nonequilibrium scenarios in which either the acceleration difference or the coupling difference becomes significant.

In this paper, we investigate the interference engineering of the open quantum system, where the environment is made indefinite either through the use of an interferometer or the introduction of auxiliary qubits. The environments are modeled by fully connected qubit baths with exact analytical dynamics. As the system passes through the interferometer or is controlled by auxiliary qubits, it is propagated along different paths or their superpositions, leading to distinct interactions with the environment in each path. This results in the superposition of the environments, which can be detected through specific measurements that retain certain coherent information about the paths. Our results demonstrate that the indefiniteness of the environment can significantly enhance the quantum correlations. However, only the statistical mixture of the influences from the environments is preserve provided that the path coherence is destructed. We also examine the serviceability of the indefiniteness as a resource for teleportation and quantum parameter estimation. Additionally, we discuss how to quantify the indefiniteness and the ways in which it affects the system’s dynamics from the perspective of wave–particle-entanglement-ignorance complementarity. Our study highlights the potential benefits of an indefinite environment in quantum information processing and sheds light on the fundamental principles underlying its effects.

We investigate the nonequilibrium back reaction on the Schwarzschild black hole from the radiation field. The back reactions are characterized by the membrane close to the black hole. When the membrane is thin, we found that larger temperature difference can lead to more significant negative surface tension, larger thermodynamic dissipation cost, and back reaction in energy and entropy as well as larger black hole area. This may be relevant to the primordial black holes in early universe. Moreover, our nonequilibrium model can resolve the inconsistency issue of the black hole back reaction under zero mass limit in the equilibrium case. In the thick membrane case, the nonequilibrium back reaction is found to be more significant than that in the thin membrane case. The nonequilibrium temperature difference can increase the energy and entropy loss as well as the thermodynamic dissipation of the black hole and the membrane back reactions. The nonequilibrium dissipation cost characterized by the entropy production rate appears to be significant compared to the entropy rate radiated by the black hole under finite temperature difference. This may shed light on the black hole information paradox due to the information loss from the entropy production rate in the nonequilibrium cases. The nonequilibrium thermodynamic fluctuations can also reflect the effects of the back reactions of the Hawking radiation on the evolution of a black hole.