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arXiv:1301.1772 · Physical Review B

Dynamics of quantum coherences at strong coupling to a heat bath

Denis Kast, Joachim Ankerhold

Published Apr 3, 2013• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The standard approach for path-integral Monte Carlo simulations of open quantum systems is extended as an efficient tool to monitor the time evolution of coherences (off-diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix) also for strong coupling to environments. Specific simulations are performed for two-level systems embedded in Ohmic and sub-Ohmic reservoirs in the domains of coherent and incoherent dynamics of the polarization. In the latter regime, the notorious difficulty to access the long-time regime is overcome by combining simulations on moderate time scales with iteratively calculated initial densities. This allows us to extract relaxation rates for sub-Ohmic environments at finite temperatures and over a broad range of couplings and to compare them to analytical predictions. The time evolution of the von Neumann entropy provides insight into the quantum phase transition at thermal equilibrium from a delocalized to a localized state at zero temperature.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.87.134301

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The standard approach for path-integral Monte Carlo simulations of open quantum systems is extended as an efficient tool to monitor the time evolution of coherences (off-diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix) also for strong coupling to environments. Specific simulations are performed for two-level systems embedded in Ohmic and sub-Ohmic reservoirs in the domains of coherent and incoherent dynamics of the polarization. In the latter regime, the notorious difficulty to access the long-time regime is overcome by combining simulations on moderate time scales with iteratively calculated initial densities. This allows us to extract relaxation rates for sub-Ohmic environments at finite temperatures and over a broad range of couplings and to compare them to analytical predictions. The time evolution of the von Neumann entropy provides insight into the quantum phase transition at thermal equilibrium from a delocalized to a localized state at zero temperature.
A master equation approach based on an optimized polaron transformation is adopted for dynamics simulation with simultaneous diagonal and off-diagonal spin-boson coupling. Two types of bath spectral density functions are considered, the Ohmic and the sub-Ohmic. The off-diagonal coupling leads asymptotically to a thermal equilibrium with a nonzero population difference Pz(t → ∞) ≠ 0, which implies localization of the system, and it also plays a role in restraining coherent dynamics for the sub-Ohmic case. Since the new method can extend to the stronger coupling regime, we can investigate the coherent-incoherent transition in the sub-Ohmic environment. Relevant phase diagrams are obtained for different temperatures. It is found that the sub-Ohmic environment allows coherent dynamics at a higher temperature than the Ohmic environment.
The quantum dynamics of a two-state system coupled to a bosonic reservoir with sub-Ohmic spectral density is investigated for strong friction. Numerically exact path integral Monte Carlo methods reveal that a changeover from coherent to incoherent relaxation does not occur for a broad class of spectral distributions. In nonequilibrium coherences associated with substantial system-reservoir entanglement exist even when strong dissipation forces the thermodynamic state of the system to behave almost classically. This may be of relevance for current experiments with nanoscale devices.
The dissipative quantum dynamics of a two-level system interacting with a structured reservoir consisting of a damped harmonic mode is investigated by means of the numerically exact path integral Monte Carlo method. This approach provides benchmark results in a broad range of parameter space, in particular, in those domains which are not accessible by approximate methods and alternative numerical schemes, that is, strong coupling between system and harmonic mode and from low to high temperatures. For low temperatures the numerical data are quantitatively in agreement with the noninteracting blip approximation only in the regimes of very weak and very strong coupling. It turns out that the entangled dynamics of the two-level system and the harmonic mode is relatively robust so that its signatures are observable up to relatively strong friction and high temperatures. Nonequilibrium initial preparations of the reservoir with respect to the initial state of the system give rise, for strong interactions, to a stepwise decay of the population, thus displaying coherent dynamics of the bath. The impact of an additional Ohmic bath coupled directly to the two-level system is studied as well, including the case where both reservoirs carry different temperatures.
The loss of coherence in a general open quantum system interacting with a bosonic environment is analyzed. The reservoir is initially in a thermal state. The reduced dynamics is described by a non-Markovian time-local master equation. We consider spectral densities that are sub- or super-Ohmic at low frequencies and arbitrarily shaped at high frequencies. In the super-Ohmic regime, for noninteger frequency powers larger than 2, long time survival of coherence appears. In the latter regime, at vanishing temperature, the asymptotic amount of surviving coherence is stabilized to its initial value, up to a phase factor, by properly increasing the bandwidth and decreasing the low-frequency profile of the spectral density. For noninteger positive frequency powers less than 2, stretched exponential-like decoherence is found over long times. The relaxations to the asymptotic configurations become arbitrarily slow by approaching the frequency power 2 of the super-Ohmic regime. The same dependence on temperature, spectral density, and scale frequency appears for purity and concurrence of two qubits and coherence of a qubit.
The quantum dynamics of pairs of two-level systems immersed in dissipative reservoirs with sub-Ohmic spectral distributions is studied by means of numerically exact path integral Monte Carlo methods. It is shown that this class of reservoirs, relevant for generic properties of strongly non-Markovian environments with possible realizations in solid state structures at cryogenic temperatures, supports bipartite entanglement in broad ranges of parameter space and even for broken symmetries and in the presence of thermal noise. The sensitivity of the creation of entanglement in nonequilibrium on the initial preparations of the reservoir is investigated in detail.
We study the dissipative quantum dynamics and the asymptotic behavior of a particle in a bistable potential interacting with a sub-Ohmic broadband environment. The reduced dynamics, in the intermediate to strong dissipation regime, is obtained beyond the two-level system approximation by using a real-time path integral approach. We find a crossover dynamic regime with damped intra-well oscillations and incoherent tunneling and a completely incoherent regime at strong damping. Moreover, a nonmonotonic behavior of the left/right well population difference is found as a function of the damping strength.