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arXiv:1302.1985 · Physical Review Letters

Comparison of Quantum and Classical Relaxation in Spin Dynamics

Robert Wieser

Published Apr 2, 2013• 31 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The classical Landau-Lifshitz equation with a damping term has been derived from the time evolution of a quantum mechanical wave function under the assumption of a non-Hermitian Hamilton operator. Further, the trajectory of a classical spin (S) has been compared with the expectation value of the spin operator (Ŝ). A good agreement between classical and quantum mechanical trajectories can be found for Hamiltonians linear in Ŝ or S, respectively. Quadratic or higher order terms in the Hamiltonian result in a disagreement.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.110.147201

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The classical Landau-Lifshitz equation with a damping term has been derived from the time evolution of a quantum mechanical wave function under the assumption of a non-Hermitian Hamilton operator. Further, the trajectory of a classical spin (S) has been compared with the expectation value of the spin operator (Ŝ). A good agreement between classical and quantum mechanical trajectories can be found for Hamiltonians linear in Ŝ or S, respectively. Quadratic or higher order terms in the Hamiltonian result in a disagreement.
The dynamics of the expectation value of a spin operator ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\mathbf{S}}}_{n}$ in the quantum mechanical Heisenberg model has been compared with the trajectory of the corresponding classical spin Sn{\mathbf{S}}_{n}Sn​. A Hamilton operator $\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\mathcal{H}}$ linear in the spin operator ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{\mathbf{S}}}_{n}$ shows a perfect agreement between quantum mechanical and classical trajectories. Quadratic or higher-order terms in the Hamilton operator lead to disagreement. The corresponding correction term can be found for different physical descriptions and methods dealing with the quantum mechanical Heisenberg model.
The classical Landau-Lifshitz equation has been derived from quantum mechanics. Starting point is the assumption of a non-Hermitian Hamilton operator to take the energy dissipation into account. The corresponding quantum mechanical time dependent Schrödinger, Liouville and Heisenberg equation have been described and the similarities and differences between classical and quantum mechanical spin dynamics have been discussed. Furthermore, a time dependent Schrödinger equation corresponding to the classical Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation and two ways to include temperature into the quantum mechanical spin dynamics have been proposed.
We examine the relation between the quantum Landau-Lifshitz equation (qqq-LL) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 147201 (2013)] and quantum Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation (qqq-LLG) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 266704 (2024)]; two non-linear purity preserving master equations that extend classical atomistic spin dynamics into the quantum regime. While the classical LL and LLG counterparts for any number of spins are known to be equivalent, i.e., give identical spin trajectories up to a rescaling of the time parameter, the quantum formulations are equivalent only in certain cases, such as for pure states or for arbitrary single spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ states. Here, we demonstrate that this equivalence breaks down even at the level of a single spin, provided s≥1s \geq 1s≥1. Focusing on a spin-1 particle in an anisotropic crystal field, we show that the qqq-LL and qqq-LLG equations generate inequivalent time evolution. We introduce temporal rescaling misfits that quantify the inequivalence of the two types of dynamics. Although our results highlight fundamental differences in dissipation mechanisms encoded in these equations, the resulting trajectories remain qualitatively similar for this system.
A system of spins coupled to a bath is a traditional setup in open quantum systems. Through Heisenberg's equation, the spin dynamics can be modeled by a set of first-order differential equations. Interpreting the terms as colored noise and non-Markovian damping, one can write them as quantummechanical Heisenberg-Langevin (HL) equations. These are notoriously difficult to solve because of the high dimensionality of the Hilbert space. Classical generalized Langevin equations, involving non-Markovian damping and colored noise, are well understood and can be treated numerically with relative ease. Thus, a classical ansatz can be made by substituting quantum expectation values with classical functions. This allows the application of standard methods developed for classical stochastic dynamical systems to tackle spin dynamics. However, this approach is uncontrolled and should be benchmarked against known quantum dynamics. In this investigation, a Hamiltonian for spin dynamics is modified to obtain a setup analogous to the Weisskopf-Wigner (WW) theory of spontaneous emission, enabling a comparison of the results. This will be compared for T = 0 and with a slight adaptation in the high-temperature limit.
The Landau-Lifshitz equation describes the time evolution of magnetic dipoles and can be derived by taking the classical limit of a quantum mechanical spin Hamiltonian. To take this limit, one constrains the many-body quantum state to a tensor product of coherent states, thereby neglecting entanglement between sites. Expectation values of the quantum spin operators produce the usual classical spin dipoles. One may also consider expectation values of polynomials of the spin operators, leading to quadrupole and higher-order spin moments, which satisfy a dynamical equation of motion that generalizes the Landau-Lifshitz dynamics [Zhang and Batista, Phys. Rev. B 104, 104409 (2021)]. Here we reformulate the dynamics of these ${N}^{2}\ensuremath{-}1$ generalized spin components as a mean-field Schr\"odinger equation on the NNN-dimensional coherent state. This viewpoint suggests efficient integration methods that respect the local symplectic structure of the classical spin dynamics.
The Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation provides the fundamental description of dissipative magnetization dynamics. A recently proposed quantum analog, the quantum Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (QLLG) equation, extends this framework to quantum spin systems. However, whether the QLLG equation recovers the LLG equation in the classical large-spin limit for interacting spin systems remains an open question. Here, we demonstrate this connection by deriving the LLG equation as the classical large-spin limit of the QLLG equation. We establish this correspondence analytically and verify it numerically for an interacting spin system. These results provide a quantum-to-classical description of dissipative spin dynamics, offering a microscopic foundation for the LLG equation. From numerical calculations provided here, we also conclude that quantum effects become much less noticeable for systems with larger number of spins in the Hamiltonian.