Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:0711.2483 · Physical Review B

Decoherence by a spin thermal bath: Role of spin-spin interactions and initial state of the bath

Shengjun Yuan, Mikhail I. Katsnelson, Hans A. De Raedt

Published May 7, 2008• 36 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a spin-bath environment. It is shown that the connectivity and the coupling strength between the spins in the environment are of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. For the anisotropic spin bath, changing the connectivity or coupling strength changes the decoherence of the central system from Gaussian to exponential decay law. The initial state of the environment is shown to affect the decoherence process in a qualitatively significant manner.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.77.184301

Related papers

Importance of bath dynamics for decoherence in spin systems

Shengjun Yuan, Mikhail I. Katsnelson, Hans A. De Raedt

We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a chaotic spin-bath environment. It is shown that connectivity of spins in the bath is of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. The previously found phenomenon of two-step decoherence (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 90}, 210401 (2003)) turns out to be typical for the bath with a slow enough dynamics or no dynamics. For a generic random system with chaotic dynamics a conventional exponential relaxation to the pointer states takes place. Our results confirm a conjecture of Paz and Zurek (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 82}, 5181 (1999)) that for weak enough interactions the pointer states are eigenstates of the central system.

arXiv:0707.2372•Jul 16, 2007•0 citations

Decoherence and Thermalization of Quantum Spin Systems

Shengjun Yuan

In this review, we discuss the decoherence and thermalization of a quantum spin system interacting with a spin bath environment, by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation of the whole system. The effects of the topologic structure and the initial state of the environment on the decoherence of the two-spin and many-spin system are discussed. The role of different spin-spin coupling is considered. We show under which conditions the environment drives the reduced density matrix of the system to a fully decoherent state, and how the diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix approach those expected for the system in the microcanonical or canonical ensemble, depending on the character of the additional integrals of motion. Our demonstration does not rely on time-averaging of observables nor does it assume that the coupling between system and bath is weak. Our findings show that the microcanonical distribution (in each eigenenergy subspace) and canonical ensemble are states that may result from pure quantum dynamics, suggesting that quantum mechanics may be regarded as the foundation of quantum statistical mechanics. Furthermore, our numerical results show that a fully decoherent quantum system prefers to stay in an equilibrium state with a maximum entropy, indicating the validity of the second law of thermodynamics in the decoherence process.

arXiv:1005.4776•Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience•Mar 23, 2011•9 citations

Weak-coupling study of decoherence of a qubit in disordered magnetic environments

Emilio A. Winograd, Marcelo J. Rozenberg, R. Chitra

We study the decoherence of a qubit weakly coupled to frustrated spin baths. We focus on spin baths described by the classical Ising spin glass and the quantum random transverse Ising model which are known to have complex thermodynamic phase diagrams as a function of an external magnetic field and temperature. Using a combination of numerical and analytical methods, we show that for baths initially in thermal equilibrium, the resulting decoherence is highly sensitive to the nature of the coupling to the environment and is qualitatively different in different parts of the phase diagram. We find an unexpected strong non-Markovian decay of the coherence when the random transverse Ising model bath is prepared in an initial state characterized by a finite temperature paramagnet. This is contrary to the usual case of exponential decay (Markovian) expected for spin baths in finite temperature paramagnetic phases, thereby illustrating the importance of the underlying nontrivial dynamics of interacting quantum spinbaths.

arXiv:1007.2105•Physical Review B•Dec 31, 2009•7 citations

Time evolution and decoherence of a spin- 12 particle coupled to a spin bath in thermal equilibrium

Yamen Hamdouni, Francesco Petruccione

The time evolution of a spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particle under the influence of a locally applied external magnetic field, and interacting with anisotropic spin environment in thermal equilibrium at temperature $T$ is studied. The exact analytical form of the reduced density matrix of the central spin is calculated explicitly for a finite number of bath spins. The case of an infinite number of environmental spins is investigated using the convergence of the rescaled bath operators to normal Gaussian random variables. In this limit, we derive the analytical form of the components of the Bloch vector for antiferromagnetic interactions within the bath, and we investigate the short-time and long-time behavior of reduced dynamics. The effect of the external magnetic field, the anisotropy, and the temperature of the bath on the decoherence of the central spin are discussed.

arXiv:0710.2001•Physical Review B•Nov 26, 2007•43 citations

Decoherence induced by interacting quantum spin baths

Davide Rossini, Tommaso Calarco, Vittorio Giovannetti +2 more

We study decoherence induced on a two-level system coupled to a one-dimensional quantum spin chain. We consider the cases where the dynamics of the chain is determined by the Ising, $XY$, or Heisenberg exchange Hamiltonian. This model of quantum baths can be of fundamental importance for the understanding of decoherence in open quantum systems, since it can be experimentally engineered by using atoms in optical lattices. As an example, here we show how to implement a pure dephasing model for a qubit system coupled to an interacting spin bath. We provide results that go beyond the case of a central spin coupled uniformly to all the spins of the bath, in particular showing what happens when the bath enters different phases, or becomes critical; we also study the dependence of the coherence loss on the number of bath spins to which the system is coupled and we describe a coupling-independent regime in which decoherence exhibits universal features, irrespective of the system-environment coupling strength. Finally, we establish a relation between decoherence and entanglement inside the bath. For the Ising and the $XY$ models we are able to give an exact expression for the decay of coherences, while for the Heisenberg bath we resort to the numerical time-dependent density matrix renormalization group.

arXiv:quant-ph/0611242•Physical Review A•Mar 26, 2007•199 citations

Decoherence by a chaotic many-spin bath

José Lages, V. V. Dobrovitski, Mikhail I. Katsnelson +2 more

We numerically investigate decoherence of a two-spin system (central system) by a bath of many spins 1/2. By carefully adjusting parameters, the dynamical regime of the bath has been varied from quantum chaos to regular, while all other dynamical characteristics have been kept practically intact. We explicitly demonstrate that for a many-body quantum bath, the onset of quantum chaos leads to significantly faster and stronger decoherence compared to an equivalent non-chaotic bath. Moreover, the non-diagonal elements of the system's density matrix, the linear entropy, and the fidelity of the central system decay differently for chaotic and non-chaotic baths. Therefore, knowledge of the basic parameters of the bath (strength of the system-bath interaction, and the bath's spectral density of states) is not always sufficient, and much finer details of the bath's dynamics can strongly affect the decoherence process.

arXiv:quant-ph/0406001•Physical Review E•Aug 31, 2005•60 citations
We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a spin-bath environment. It is shown that the connectivity and the coupling strength between the spins in the environment are of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. For the anisotropic spin bath, changing the connectivity or coupling strength changes the decoherence of the central system from Gaussian to exponential decay law. The initial state of the environment is shown to affect the decoherence process in a qualitatively significant manner.
We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a chaotic spin-bath environment. It is shown that connectivity of spins in the bath is of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. The previously found phenomenon of two-step decoherence (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 90}, 210401 (2003)) turns out to be typical for the bath with a slow enough dynamics or no dynamics. For a generic random system with chaotic dynamics a conventional exponential relaxation to the pointer states takes place. Our results confirm a conjecture of Paz and Zurek (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 82}, 5181 (1999)) that for weak enough interactions the pointer states are eigenstates of the central system.
In this review, we discuss the decoherence and thermalization of a quantum spin system interacting with a spin bath environment, by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation of the whole system. The effects of the topologic structure and the initial state of the environment on the decoherence of the two-spin and many-spin system are discussed. The role of different spin-spin coupling is considered. We show under which conditions the environment drives the reduced density matrix of the system to a fully decoherent state, and how the diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix approach those expected for the system in the microcanonical or canonical ensemble, depending on the character of the additional integrals of motion. Our demonstration does not rely on time-averaging of observables nor does it assume that the coupling between system and bath is weak. Our findings show that the microcanonical distribution (in each eigenenergy subspace) and canonical ensemble are states that may result from pure quantum dynamics, suggesting that quantum mechanics may be regarded as the foundation of quantum statistical mechanics. Furthermore, our numerical results show that a fully decoherent quantum system prefers to stay in an equilibrium state with a maximum entropy, indicating the validity of the second law of thermodynamics in the decoherence process.
We study the decoherence of a qubit weakly coupled to frustrated spin baths. We focus on spin baths described by the classical Ising spin glass and the quantum random transverse Ising model which are known to have complex thermodynamic phase diagrams as a function of an external magnetic field and temperature. Using a combination of numerical and analytical methods, we show that for baths initially in thermal equilibrium, the resulting decoherence is highly sensitive to the nature of the coupling to the environment and is qualitatively different in different parts of the phase diagram. We find an unexpected strong non-Markovian decay of the coherence when the random transverse Ising model bath is prepared in an initial state characterized by a finite temperature paramagnet. This is contrary to the usual case of exponential decay (Markovian) expected for spin baths in finite temperature paramagnetic phases, thereby illustrating the importance of the underlying nontrivial dynamics of interacting quantum spinbaths.
The time evolution of a spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ particle under the influence of a locally applied external magnetic field, and interacting with anisotropic spin environment in thermal equilibrium at temperature TTT is studied. The exact analytical form of the reduced density matrix of the central spin is calculated explicitly for a finite number of bath spins. The case of an infinite number of environmental spins is investigated using the convergence of the rescaled bath operators to normal Gaussian random variables. In this limit, we derive the analytical form of the components of the Bloch vector for antiferromagnetic interactions within the bath, and we investigate the short-time and long-time behavior of reduced dynamics. The effect of the external magnetic field, the anisotropy, and the temperature of the bath on the decoherence of the central spin are discussed.
We study decoherence induced on a two-level system coupled to a one-dimensional quantum spin chain. We consider the cases where the dynamics of the chain is determined by the Ising, XYXYXY, or Heisenberg exchange Hamiltonian. This model of quantum baths can be of fundamental importance for the understanding of decoherence in open quantum systems, since it can be experimentally engineered by using atoms in optical lattices. As an example, here we show how to implement a pure dephasing model for a qubit system coupled to an interacting spin bath. We provide results that go beyond the case of a central spin coupled uniformly to all the spins of the bath, in particular showing what happens when the bath enters different phases, or becomes critical; we also study the dependence of the coherence loss on the number of bath spins to which the system is coupled and we describe a coupling-independent regime in which decoherence exhibits universal features, irrespective of the system-environment coupling strength. Finally, we establish a relation between decoherence and entanglement inside the bath. For the Ising and the XYXYXY models we are able to give an exact expression for the decay of coherences, while for the Heisenberg bath we resort to the numerical time-dependent density matrix renormalization group.
We numerically investigate decoherence of a two-spin system (central system) by a bath of many spins 1/2. By carefully adjusting parameters, the dynamical regime of the bath has been varied from quantum chaos to regular, while all other dynamical characteristics have been kept practically intact. We explicitly demonstrate that for a many-body quantum bath, the onset of quantum chaos leads to significantly faster and stronger decoherence compared to an equivalent non-chaotic bath. Moreover, the non-diagonal elements of the system's density matrix, the linear entropy, and the fidelity of the central system decay differently for chaotic and non-chaotic baths. Therefore, knowledge of the basic parameters of the bath (strength of the system-bath interaction, and the bath's spectral density of states) is not always sufficient, and much finer details of the bath's dynamics can strongly affect the decoherence process.