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:1509.04649 · Physical Review A

Dynamics of decoherence: Universal scaling of the decoherence factor

Sei Suzuki, Tanay Nag, Amit Dutta

Published Jan 13, 2016• 33 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the time dependence of the decoherence factor (DF) of a qubit globally coupled to an environmental spin system (ESS) which is driven across the quantum critical point (QCP) by varying a parameter of its Hamiltonian in time $t$ as $1\ensuremath{-}t/\ensuremath{\tau}$ or $\ensuremath{-}t/\ensuremath{\tau}$, to which the qubit is coupled starting at the time $t\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\infty}$; here $\ensuremath{\tau}$ denotes the inverse quenching rate. In the limit of weak coupling we analyze the time evolution of the DF in the vicinity of the QCP (chosen to be at $t=0$) and define three quantities, namely, the generalized fidelity susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{F}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ (defined right at the QCP), and the decay constants ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{1}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{2}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ which dictate the decay of the DF at a small but finite $t(>0)$. Using a dimensional analysis argument based on the Kibble-Zurek healing length, we show that ${\ensuremath{\chi}}_{F}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ as well as ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{1}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{2}(\ensuremath{\tau})$ indeed satisfy universal power-law scaling relations with $\ensuremath{\tau}$ and the exponents are solely determined by the spatial dimensionality of the ESS and the exponents associated with its QCP. Remarkably, using the numerical t-DMRG method, these scaling relations are shown to be valid in both the situations when the ESS is integrable and nonintegrable and also for both linear and nonlinear variation of the parameter. Furthermore, when an integrable ESS is quenched far away from the QCP, there is a predominant Gaussian decay of the DF with a decay constant which also satisfies a universal scaling relation.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.93.012112

Related papers

Scaling of the decoherence factor of a qubit coupled to a spin chain driven across quantum critical points

Tanay Nag, Uma Divakaran, Amit Dutta

We study the scaling of the decoherence factor of a qubit (spin-$1/2$) using the central spin model in which the central spin (qubit) is globally coupled to a transverse XY spin chain. The aim here is to study the nonequilibrium generation of decoherence when the spin chain is driven across (along) quantum critical points (lines) and derive the scaling of the decoherence factor in terms of the driving rate and some of the exponents associated with the quantum critical points. Our studies show that the scaling of the logarithm of the decoherence factor is identical to that of the defect density in the final state of the spin chain following a quench across isolated quantum critical points for both linear and nonlinear variations of a parameter, even if the defect density may not satisfy the standard Kibble-Zurek scaling. However, one finds an interesting deviation when the spin chain is driven along a critical line. Our analytical predictions are in complete agreement with numerical results. Our study, though limited to integrable two-level systems, points to the existence of a universality in the scaling of the decoherence factor which is not necessarily identical to the scaling of the defect density.

arXiv:1203.1186•Physical Review B•Jul 6, 2012•44 citations

Decoherent Quench Dynamics across Quantum Phase Transitions

Wei-Ting Kuo, Daniel P. Arovas, Smitha Vishveshwara +1 more

We present a formulation for investigating quench dynamics across quantum phase transitions in the presence of decoherence. We formulate decoherent dynamics induced by continuous quantum non-demolition measurements of the instantaneous Hamiltonian. We generalize the well-studied universal Kibble-Zurek behavior for linear temporal drive across the critical point. We identify a strong decoherence regime wherein the decoherence time is shorter than the standard correlation time, which varies as the inverse gap above the groundstate. In this regime, we find that the freeze-out time $\bar{t}\simτ^{{2νz}/({1+2νz})}$ for when the system falls out of equilibrium and the associated freeze-out length $\barξ\simτ^{ν/({1+2νz})}$ show power-law scaling with respect to the quench rate $1/τ$, where the exponents depend on the correlation length exponent $ν$ and the dynamical exponent $z$ associated with the transition. The universal exponents differ from those of standard Kibble-Zurek scaling. We explicitly demonstrate this scaling behavior in the instance of a topological transition in a Chern insulator system. We show that the freeze-out time scale can be probed from the relaxation of the Hall conductivity. Furthermore, on introducing disorder to break translational invariance, we demonstrate how quenching results in regions of imbalanced excitation density characterized by an emergent length scale which also shows universal scaling. We perform numerical simulations to confirm our analytical predictions and corroborate the scaling arguments that we postulate as universal to a host of systems.

arXiv:2103.08068•Mar 14, 2021•1 citation

Quantum critical dynamics and emergent universality in decoherent digital quantum processors

Brendan Rhyno, Swarnadeep Majumder, Smitha Vishveshwara +1 more

Understanding how noise influences nonequilibrium quantum critical dynamics is essential for both fundamental physics and the development of practical quantum technologies. While the quantum Kibble-Zurek (QKZ) mechanism predicts universal scaling during quenches across a critical point, real quantum systems exhibit complex decoherence that can substantially modify these behaviors, ranging from altering critical scaling to completely suppressing it. By considering a specific case of nondemolishing noise, we first show how decoherence can reshape universal scaling and verify these theoretical predictions using numerical simulations of spin chains across a wide range of noise strengths. Then, we study linear quenches in the transverse-field Ising model on IBM superconducting processors where the noise model is unknown. Using large system sizes of 80-120 qubits, we measure equal-time connected correlations, defect densities, and excess energies across various quench times. Surprisingly, unlike earlier observations where noise-induced defect production masked universal behavior at long times, we observe clear scaling relations, pointing towards persistent universal structure shaped by decoherence. The extracted scaling exponents differ from both ideal QKZ predictions and analytic results for simplified noise models, suggesting the emergence of a distinct noise-influenced universality regime. Our results, therefore, point toward the possibility of using universal dynamical scaling as a high-level descriptor of quantum hardware, complementary to conventional gate-level performance metrics.

quant-pharXiv:2512.13143•Dec 16, 2025•0 citations

Decoherent quench dynamics across quantum phase transitions

Wei-Ting Kuo, Daniel P. Arovas, Smitha Vishveshwara +1 more

We present a formulation for investigating quench dynamics across quantum phase transitions in the presence of decoherence. We formulate decoherent dynamics induced by continuous quantum non-demolition measurements of the instantaneous Hamiltonian. We generalize the well-studied universal Kibble-Zurek behavior for linear temporal drive across the critical point. We identify a strong decoherence regime wherein the decoherence time is shorter than the standard correlation time, which varies as the inverse gap above the groundstate. In this regime, we find that the freeze-out time \bar{t}\sim\tau^{{2\nu z}/({1+2\nu z})} t - ∼ τ 2 ν z / ( 1 + 2 ν z ) for when the system falls out of equilibrium and the associated freeze-out length \bar{\xi}\sim\tau^{\nu/({1+2\nu z})} ξ ‾ ∼ τ ν / ( 1 + 2 ν z ) show power-law scaling with respect to the quench rate 1/\tau 1 / τ , where the exponents depend on the correlation length exponent \nu ν and the dynamical exponent z z associated with the transition. The universal exponents differ from those of standard Kibble-Zurek scaling. We explicitly demonstrate this scaling behavior in the instance of a topological transition in a Chern insulator system. We show that the freeze-out time scale can be probed from the relaxation of the Hall conductivity. Furthermore, on introducing disorder to break translational invariance, we demonstrate how quenching results in regions of imbalanced excitation density characterized by an emergent length scale which also shows universal scaling. We perform numerical simulations to confirm our analytical predictions and corroborate the scaling arguments that we postulate as universal to a host of systems.

SciPost Physics•Oct 28, 2021•5 citations

Dynamics of decoherence in a noisy driven environment

Rouhollah Jafari, Ali Asadian, Mehdi Abdi +1 more

We analyze the decoherence dynamics of a central spin coupled to a spin chain with a time-dependent noisy magnetic field, focusing on how noise influences the system's decoherence. Our results show that decoherence due to the nonequilibrium critical dynamics of the environment is amplified in the presence of uncorrelated and correlated Gaussian noise. We demonstrate that decoherence factor consistently signals the critical points, and exhibits exponential scaling with the system size, the square of noise intensity, and the noise correlation time at the critical points. We find that strong coupling between the qubit and the environment leads to partial revivals of decoherence, which diminish with increasing noise intensity or decreasing noise correlation time. In contrast, weak coupling leads to monotonic enhanced decoherence. The numerical results illustrate that, the revivals decay and scale exponentially with noise intensity. Moreover, the revivals increase and indicate linear or power law scaling with noise correlation time depending on how the correlated noise is fast or slow. Additionally, we explore the non-Markovianity of the dynamics, finding that it decays in the presence of noise but increases as the noise correlation time grows.

arXiv:2409.01375•Scientific Reports•May 13, 2025•5 citations

Kink-kink correlations in nonlinear quenches across a quantum critical point

Lakshita Jindal, Kavita Jain

When a quantum system exhibiting a second order phase transition is quenched across the critical point in large but finite time, the dynamics are not adiabatic in the critical region and the Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism provides a framework to determine local observables such as the mean defect density. However, to find higher-point functions, one has to go beyond the KZ paradigm asshown in recent works on one-dimensional transverse field Ising model (TFIM) following a linear quench. It has been found that (i) besides the KZ scale, the quench dynamics depend on another length scale that arises due to the finite phase difference between the low energy modes, and (ii) contrary to the expectations based on the KZ mechanism, in general, the correlation functions do not decay exponentially with distance. Motivated by these results for the linear quench, we are interested in understanding if these properties are universal, and consider the 1D TFIM when the transverse field varies algebraically in the vicinity of the critical field. We focus on the equal-time,longitudinal kink-kink correlation function at the end of the quench from the paramagnetic to the ferromagnetic phase, and find that (i) the correlator depends only on the KZ length for superlinear quenches, otherwise an additional dephasing length is required to describe it, and (ii) the dephased correlator decays as a compressed exponential with an exponent that changes continuously with the quench exponent. Our results are obtained using an adiabatic perturbation theory, analytical arguments and exact numerical integration of the relevant equations.

cond-mat.stat-mechCross-listedarXiv:2605.05106•May 7, 2026•0 citations
We study the time dependence of the decoherence factor (DF) of a qubit globally coupled to an environmental spin system (ESS) which is driven across the quantum critical point (QCP) by varying a parameter of its Hamiltonian in time ttt as 1\ensuremath−t/\ensuremathτ1\ensuremath{-}t/\ensuremath{\tau}1\ensuremath−t/\ensuremathτ or \ensuremath−t/\ensuremathτ\ensuremath{-}t/\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath−t/\ensuremathτ, to which the qubit is coupled starting at the time t\ensuremath→\ensuremath−\ensuremath∞t\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\infty}t\ensuremath→\ensuremath−\ensuremath∞; here \ensuremathτ\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremathτ denotes the inverse quenching rate. In the limit of weak coupling we analyze the time evolution of the DF in the vicinity of the QCP (chosen to be at t=0t=0t=0) and define three quantities, namely, the generalized fidelity susceptibility \ensuremathχF(\ensuremathτ){\ensuremath{\chi}}_{F}(\ensuremath{\tau})\ensuremathχF​(\ensuremathτ) (defined right at the QCP), and the decay constants \ensuremathα1(\ensuremathτ){\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{1}(\ensuremath{\tau})\ensuremathα1​(\ensuremathτ) and \ensuremathα2(\ensuremathτ){\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{2}(\ensuremath{\tau})\ensuremathα2​(\ensuremathτ) which dictate the decay of the DF at a small but finite t(>0)t(>0)t(>0). Using a dimensional analysis argument based on the Kibble-Zurek healing length, we show that \ensuremathχF(\ensuremathτ){\ensuremath{\chi}}_{F}(\ensuremath{\tau})\ensuremathχF​(\ensuremathτ) as well as \ensuremathα1(\ensuremathτ){\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{1}(\ensuremath{\tau})\ensuremathα1​(\ensuremathτ) and \ensuremathα2(\ensuremathτ){\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{2}(\ensuremath{\tau})\ensuremathα2​(\ensuremathτ) indeed satisfy universal power-law scaling relations with \ensuremathτ\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremathτ and the exponents are solely determined by the spatial dimensionality of the ESS and the exponents associated with its QCP. Remarkably, using the numerical t-DMRG method, these scaling relations are shown to be valid in both the situations when the ESS is integrable and nonintegrable and also for both linear and nonlinear variation of the parameter. Furthermore, when an integrable ESS is quenched far away from the QCP, there is a predominant Gaussian decay of the DF with a decay constant which also satisfies a universal scaling relation.
We study the scaling of the decoherence factor of a qubit (spin-1/21/21/2) using the central spin model in which the central spin (qubit) is globally coupled to a transverse XY spin chain. The aim here is to study the nonequilibrium generation of decoherence when the spin chain is driven across (along) quantum critical points (lines) and derive the scaling of the decoherence factor in terms of the driving rate and some of the exponents associated with the quantum critical points. Our studies show that the scaling of the logarithm of the decoherence factor is identical to that of the defect density in the final state of the spin chain following a quench across isolated quantum critical points for both linear and nonlinear variations of a parameter, even if the defect density may not satisfy the standard Kibble-Zurek scaling. However, one finds an interesting deviation when the spin chain is driven along a critical line. Our analytical predictions are in complete agreement with numerical results. Our study, though limited to integrable two-level systems, points to the existence of a universality in the scaling of the decoherence factor which is not necessarily identical to the scaling of the defect density.
We present a formulation for investigating quench dynamics across quantum phase transitions in the presence of decoherence. We formulate decoherent dynamics induced by continuous quantum non-demolition measurements of the instantaneous Hamiltonian. We generalize the well-studied universal Kibble-Zurek behavior for linear temporal drive across the critical point. We identify a strong decoherence regime wherein the decoherence time is shorter than the standard correlation time, which varies as the inverse gap above the groundstate. In this regime, we find that the freeze-out time tˉ∼τ2νz/(1+2νz)\bar{t}\simτ^{{2νz}/({1+2νz})}tˉ∼τ2νz/(1+2νz) for when the system falls out of equilibrium and the associated freeze-out length ξˉ∼τν/(1+2νz)\barξ\simτ^{ν/({1+2νz})}ξˉ​∼τν/(1+2νz) show power-law scaling with respect to the quench rate 1/τ1/τ1/τ, where the exponents depend on the correlation length exponent ννν and the dynamical exponent zzz associated with the transition. The universal exponents differ from those of standard Kibble-Zurek scaling. We explicitly demonstrate this scaling behavior in the instance of a topological transition in a Chern insulator system. We show that the freeze-out time scale can be probed from the relaxation of the Hall conductivity. Furthermore, on introducing disorder to break translational invariance, we demonstrate how quenching results in regions of imbalanced excitation density characterized by an emergent length scale which also shows universal scaling. We perform numerical simulations to confirm our analytical predictions and corroborate the scaling arguments that we postulate as universal to a host of systems.
Understanding how noise influences nonequilibrium quantum critical dynamics is essential for both fundamental physics and the development of practical quantum technologies. While the quantum Kibble-Zurek (QKZ) mechanism predicts universal scaling during quenches across a critical point, real quantum systems exhibit complex decoherence that can substantially modify these behaviors, ranging from altering critical scaling to completely suppressing it. By considering a specific case of nondemolishing noise, we first show how decoherence can reshape universal scaling and verify these theoretical predictions using numerical simulations of spin chains across a wide range of noise strengths. Then, we study linear quenches in the transverse-field Ising model on IBM superconducting processors where the noise model is unknown. Using large system sizes of 80-120 qubits, we measure equal-time connected correlations, defect densities, and excess energies across various quench times. Surprisingly, unlike earlier observations where noise-induced defect production masked universal behavior at long times, we observe clear scaling relations, pointing towards persistent universal structure shaped by decoherence. The extracted scaling exponents differ from both ideal QKZ predictions and analytic results for simplified noise models, suggesting the emergence of a distinct noise-influenced universality regime. Our results, therefore, point toward the possibility of using universal dynamical scaling as a high-level descriptor of quantum hardware, complementary to conventional gate-level performance metrics.
We present a formulation for investigating quench dynamics across quantum phase transitions in the presence of decoherence. We formulate decoherent dynamics induced by continuous quantum non-demolition measurements of the instantaneous Hamiltonian. We generalize the well-studied universal Kibble-Zurek behavior for linear temporal drive across the critical point. We identify a strong decoherence regime wherein the decoherence time is shorter than the standard correlation time, which varies as the inverse gap above the groundstate. In this regime, we find that the freeze-out time \bar{t}\sim\tau^{{2\nu z}/({1+2\nu z})} t - ∼ τ 2 ν z / ( 1 + 2 ν z ) for when the system falls out of equilibrium and the associated freeze-out length \bar{\xi}\sim\tau^{\nu/({1+2\nu z})} ξ ‾ ∼ τ ν / ( 1 + 2 ν z ) show power-law scaling with respect to the quench rate 1/\tau 1 / τ , where the exponents depend on the correlation length exponent \nu ν and the dynamical exponent z z associated with the transition. The universal exponents differ from those of standard Kibble-Zurek scaling. We explicitly demonstrate this scaling behavior in the instance of a topological transition in a Chern insulator system. We show that the freeze-out time scale can be probed from the relaxation of the Hall conductivity. Furthermore, on introducing disorder to break translational invariance, we demonstrate how quenching results in regions of imbalanced excitation density characterized by an emergent length scale which also shows universal scaling. We perform numerical simulations to confirm our analytical predictions and corroborate the scaling arguments that we postulate as universal to a host of systems.
We analyze the decoherence dynamics of a central spin coupled to a spin chain with a time-dependent noisy magnetic field, focusing on how noise influences the system's decoherence. Our results show that decoherence due to the nonequilibrium critical dynamics of the environment is amplified in the presence of uncorrelated and correlated Gaussian noise. We demonstrate that decoherence factor consistently signals the critical points, and exhibits exponential scaling with the system size, the square of noise intensity, and the noise correlation time at the critical points. We find that strong coupling between the qubit and the environment leads to partial revivals of decoherence, which diminish with increasing noise intensity or decreasing noise correlation time. In contrast, weak coupling leads to monotonic enhanced decoherence. The numerical results illustrate that, the revivals decay and scale exponentially with noise intensity. Moreover, the revivals increase and indicate linear or power law scaling with noise correlation time depending on how the correlated noise is fast or slow. Additionally, we explore the non-Markovianity of the dynamics, finding that it decays in the presence of noise but increases as the noise correlation time grows.
When a quantum system exhibiting a second order phase transition is quenched across the critical point in large but finite time, the dynamics are not adiabatic in the critical region and the Kibble-Zurek (KZ) mechanism provides a framework to determine local observables such as the mean defect density. However, to find higher-point functions, one has to go beyond the KZ paradigm asshown in recent works on one-dimensional transverse field Ising model (TFIM) following a linear quench. It has been found that (i) besides the KZ scale, the quench dynamics depend on another length scale that arises due to the finite phase difference between the low energy modes, and (ii) contrary to the expectations based on the KZ mechanism, in general, the correlation functions do not decay exponentially with distance. Motivated by these results for the linear quench, we are interested in understanding if these properties are universal, and consider the 1D TFIM when the transverse field varies algebraically in the vicinity of the critical field. We focus on the equal-time,longitudinal kink-kink correlation function at the end of the quench from the paramagnetic to the ferromagnetic phase, and find that (i) the correlator depends only on the KZ length for superlinear quenches, otherwise an additional dephasing length is required to describe it, and (ii) the dephased correlator decays as a compressed exponential with an exponent that changes continuously with the quench exponent. Our results are obtained using an adiabatic perturbation theory, analytical arguments and exact numerical integration of the relevant equations.