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arXiv:1709.09417 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Decoherence from spin environments: Loschmidt echo and quasiparticle excitations

Rouhollah Jafari, Henrik Johannesson

Published Dec 20, 2017• 33 citations
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Abstract

We revisit the problem of decoherence of a qubit centrally coupled to an interacting spin environment, here modeled by a quantum compass chain or an extended XY model in a staggered magnetic field. These two models both support distinct spin-liquid phases, adding a new element to the problem. By analyzing their Loschmidt echoes when perturbed by the qubit we find that a fast decoherence of the qubit is conditioned on the presence of propagating quasiparticles which couple to it. Differently from expectations based on earlier works on central spin models, our result implies that the closeness of an environment to a quantum phase transition is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for an accelerated decoherence rate of a qubit.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.96.224302

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We revisit the problem of decoherence of a qubit centrally coupled to an interacting spin environment, here modeled by a quantum compass chain or an extended XY model in a staggered magnetic field. These two models both support distinct spin-liquid phases, adding a new element to the problem. By analyzing their Loschmidt echoes when perturbed by the qubit we find that a fast decoherence of the qubit is conditioned on the presence of propagating quasiparticles which couple to it. Differently from expectations based on earlier works on central spin models, our result implies that the closeness of an environment to a quantum phase transition is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for an accelerated decoherence rate of a qubit.
We study the Loschmidt echo (LE) in a central spin model in which a central spin is globally coupled to an environment (EEE) which is subjected to a small and sudden quench at t=0t=0t=0, so that its state at t=0+t={0}^{+}t=0+ remains the same as the ground state of the initial environmental Hamiltonian before the quench; this leads to a nonequilibrium situation. This state now evolves with two Hamiltonians, the final Hamiltonian following the quench and its modified version which incorporates an additional term arising due to the coupling of the central spin to the environment. Using a generic short-time scaling of the decay rate, we establish that in the early-time limit, the rate of decay of the LE close to the quantum critical point (QCP) of EEE is independent of the quenching. We also study the temporal evolution of the LE and establish the presence of a crossover to a situation where the quenching becomes irrelevant. In the limit of large quench amplitude the nonequilibrium initial condition is found to result in a drastic increase in decoherence at large times, even far away from a QCP. These generic results are verified analytically as well as numerically, choosing EEE to be a transverse Ising chain where the transverse field is suddenly quenched.
By introducing the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya (DM) interaction, the Loschmidt Echo ( LE ) of a quantum system consisting of a central spin and its surrounding environment characterized by an XY spin chain was investigated analytically and numerically. At the critical points of the magnetic field, the LE presents an obvious decay. The decay amplitude can be tuned by the DM interaction. In some specific intervals the DM interaction can remarkably delay the decay of the LE . On the other hand, the DM interaction can change the effects of the anisotropy parameter on the LE.
We examine two exactly solvable models of decoherence---a central spin-system, (i) with and (ii) without a self-Hamiltonian, interacting with a collection of environment spins. In the absence of a self-Hamiltonian we show that in this model (introduced some time ago to illustrate environment-induced superselection) generic assumptions about the coupling strengths can lead to a universal (Gaussian) suppression of coherence between pointer states. On the other hand, we show that when the dynamics of the central spin is dominant a different regime emerges, which is characterized by a non-Gaussian decay and a dramatically different set of pointer states. We explore the regimes of validity of the Gaussian decay and discuss its relation to the spectral features of the environment and to the Loschmidt echo (or fidelity).
We study the decoherence process of an exact solvable model that consists of a central spin-1/2 coupling to the surrounding anisotropy spin-1/2 chain in transverse fields. The Loschmidt echo is calculated to study the character of decoherence with different degree of anisotropy. Our results show that the degree of anisotropy γ greatly affects the decoherence process of the central spin-system when the spin chain is in weak transverse fields, but it gives weak effect in the strong transverse field. The decoherence process of the central system changed dramatically along the line of the critical points, and this may be explained as the reflection of quantum phase transitions.
For a central system uniformly coupled to a XY spin-1/2 bath in a transverse field, we explicitly calculate the Loschmidt echo(LE) to characterize decoherence quantitatively. We find that the anisotropy parameter γγγ affects decoherence of the central system sensitively when γ∈[0,1]γ\in [0,1]γ∈[0,1]% , in particular, the LE becomes unit without varying with time when $γ=0 $, implying that environment-induced decoherence vanishes . Some other cases in which the LE is unit are discussed also.