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arXiv:1510.05624 · Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment

Quantum dissipative dynamics of a bistable system in the sub-Ohmic to super-Ohmic regime

Luca Magazzù, Angelo C. M. Carollo, Bernardo Spagnolo, Davide Valenti

Published May 1, 2016• 24 citations
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Abstract

Abstract We investigate the quantum dynamics of a multilevel bistable system coupled to a bosonic heat bath beyond the perturbative regime. We consider different spectral densities of the bath, in the transition from sub-Ohmic to super-Ohmic dissipation, and different cutoff frequencies. The study is carried out by using the real-time path integral approach of the Feynman–Vernon influence functional. We find that, in the crossover dynamical regime characterized by damped intrawell oscillations and incoherent tunneling, the short time behavior and the time scales of the relaxation starting from a nonequilibrium initial condition depend nontrivially on the spectral properties of the heat bath.

DOI
10.1088/1742-5468/2016/05/054016

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Physical Review E•Oct 6, 2009•16 citations
Abstract We investigate the quantum dynamics of a multilevel bistable system coupled to a bosonic heat bath beyond the perturbative regime. We consider different spectral densities of the bath, in the transition from sub-Ohmic to super-Ohmic dissipation, and different cutoff frequencies. The study is carried out by using the real-time path integral approach of the Feynman–Vernon influence functional. We find that, in the crossover dynamical regime characterized by damped intrawell oscillations and incoherent tunneling, the short time behavior and the time scales of the relaxation starting from a nonequilibrium initial condition depend nontrivially on the spectral properties of the heat bath.
The stabilizing effect of quantum fluctuations on the escape process and the relaxation dynamics from a quantum metastable state are investigated. Specifically, the quantum dynamics of a multilevel bistable system coupled to a bosonic Ohmic thermal bath in strong dissipation regime is analyzed. The study is performed by a non-perturbative method based on the real-time path integral approach of the Feynman-Vernon influence functional. We consider a strongly asymmetric double well potential with and without a monochromatic external driving, and with an out-of-equilibrium initial condition. In the absence of driving we observe a nonmonotonic behavior of the escape time from the metastable region, as a function both of the system-bath coupling coefficient and the temperature. This indicates a stabilizing effect of the quantum fluctuations. In the presence of driving our findings indicate that, as the coupling coefficient γ increases, the escape time, initially controlled by the external driving, shows resonant peaks and dips, becoming frequency-independent for higher γ values. Moreover, the escape time from the metastable state displays a nonmonotonic behavior as a function of the temperature, the frequency of the driving, and the thermal-bath coupling, which indicates the presence of a quantum noise enhanced stability phenomenon. Finally, we investigate the role of different spectral densities, both in sub-Ohmic and super-Ohmic dissipation regime and for different cutoff frequencies, on the relaxation dynamics from the quantum metastable state. The results obtained indicate that, in the crossover dynamical regime characterized by damped intrawell oscillations and incoherent tunneling, the spectral properties of the thermal bath influence non-trivially the short time behavior and the time scales of the relaxation dynamics from the metastable state.
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.
The transition from weakly damped coherent motion to localization in the context of the spin-boson model has been the subject of numerous studies with distinct behavior depending on the form of the phonon-bath spectral density $J\left(\ensuremath{\omega}\right)\ensuremath{\propto}{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{s}$. Sub-Ohmic (s<1s<1s<1) and Ohmic (s=1s=1s=1) spectral densities show a clear localization transition at zero temperature and zero bias, while for super-Ohmic (s>1s>1s>1) spectral densities this transition disappears. In this paper, we consider the influence of the phonon-bath spectral density on the nonequilibrium dynamics of a quantum dot with electron-phonon interactions described by the extended Holstein model. Using the reduced density matrix formalism combined with the multilayer multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree approach, we investigate the dynamic response, the time scales for relaxation, as well as the existence of multiple long-lived solutions as the system-bath coupling changes from the sub- to the super-Ohmic cases. Bistability is shown to diminish for increasing powers of sss similar to the spin-boson case. However, the physical mechanism and the dependence on the model parameters such as the typical bath frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{c}$ and the polaron shift $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ are rather distinct.
The dissipative dynamics of a quantum bistable system coupled to a Ohmic heat bath is investigated beyond the spin-boson approximation. Within the path-integral approach to quantum dissipation, we propose an approximation scheme which exploits the separation of time scales between intra- and interwell (tunneling) dynamics. The resulting generalized master equation for the populations in a space localized basis enables us to investigate a wide range of temperatures and system-environment coupling strengths. A phase diagram in the coupling-temperature space is provided to give a comprehensive account of the different dynamical regimes.
We show that the low-frequency modes of a sub-Ohmic bosonic heat bath generate an effective dynamical asymmetry for an intrinsically symmetric quantum spin-1/2. An initially fully polarized spin first decays toward a quasiequilibrium determined by the dynamical asymmetry, thereby showing coherent damped oscillations on the (fast) time scale of the spin splitting. On top of this, the dynamical asymmetry itself decays on an ultraslow time scale and vanishes asymptotically since the global equilibrium phase is symmetric. We quantitatively study the nature of the initial fast decay to the quasiequilibrium and discuss the features of ultraslow dynamics of the quasiequilibrium itself. The dynamical asymmetry is more pronounced for smaller values of the sub-Ohmic exponent and for lower temperatures, which emphasizes the quantum many-body nature of the effect. The symmetry breaking is related to the dynamic crossover between coherent and overdamped relaxation of the spin polarization and is not connected to the localization quantum phase transition. In addition to this delocalized phase, we identify a phase which is characterized by damped coherent oscillations in the localized phase. This allows for a sketch of the zero-temperature phase diagram of the sub-Ohmic spin-boson model with four distinct phases.
The quantum dynamics of the dissipative two-level system with nonzero bias and sub-Ohmic bath is studied by means of the perturbation approach based on a unitary transformation. It has been shown that for the sub-Ohmic bath it is necessary to use the non-Markovian approach, especially for the short time behavior of the coupled system and environment. The nonequilibrium correlation P(t)P(t)P(t) has been calculated to show that a finite bias may favor the short time coherence. The spectrum of the susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{\ensuremath{''}}(\ensuremath{\omega})$ of the sub-Ohmic case may have a double peak structure in the range of $\ensuremath{\omega}>0$ when the coupling $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ is relatively strong. Besides, the coherence-decoherence transition point ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$ is determined for different $0<s\ensuremath{\le}1$ by the condition of ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{\ensuremath{''}}(\ensuremath{\omega}=0)=\ensuremath{\infty}$ when $\ensuremath{\alpha}={\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$. Finally, we show that Shiba's relation is exactly satisfied in our results.