The Berry phase effect plays a central role in many mesoscale condensed matter and quantum chemical systems that are naturally under the environmental influence of dissipation. We propose and microscopically derive a prototypical quantum coherent tunneling model around a monopole or conical potential intersection in order to address the intriguing but overlooked interplay between dissipation and the topologically nontrivial Berry phase effect. We adopt the instanton approach with both symmetry analysis and accurate numerical solutions that consistently incorporate nonperturbative dissipation and the Berry phase. It reveals a unique and interesting dissipative quantum interference phenomenon with the Berry phase effect. The phase diagram of this tunneling exhibits Kramers degeneracy, nonmonotonic dependence on dissipation, and a generic dissipation-driven phase transition of quantum interference, before which an unconventional dissipation-enhanced regime of quantum tunneling persists.
The Berry phase effect plays a central role in many mesoscale condensed matter and quantum chemical systems that are naturally under the environmental influence of dissipation. We propose and microscopically derive a prototypical quantum coherent tunneling model around a monopole or conical potential intersection in order to address the intriguing but overlooked interplay between dissipation and the topologically nontrivial Berry phase effect. We adopt the instanton approach with both symmetry analysis and accurate numerical solutions that consistently incorporate nonperturbative dissipation and the Berry phase. It reveals a unique and interesting dissipative quantum interference phenomenon with the Berry phase effect. The phase diagram of this tunneling exhibits Kramers degeneracy, nonmonotonic dependence on dissipation, and a generic dissipation-driven phase transition of quantum interference, before which an unconventional dissipation-enhanced regime of quantum tunneling persists.
We study in the presence of dissipation the quantum phenomena of tunneling and especially interference around a Weyl-like or conical potential crossing due to the monopolar Berry gauge phase. It is pertinent to a wide range of physical and quantum chemical phenomena, and we microscopically motivate this model from the effective dynamics of collective degrees of freedom arising from a two-level system coupled to a bosonic bath. Using the instanton approach with symmetry analysis and advanced numerical methods, we are able to investigate the interplay between phase interference and dissipation by resolving the phase diagram of coherent tunneling with respect to the potential bias and dissipation. Under emergent mirror symmetry protection, the coherent tunneling exhibits Kramers degeneracy, nonmonotonic dependence on dissipation and a generic phase transition to no interference, before which an anomalous dissipation-enhanced regime persists.
We consider the geometric phase and quantum tunneling in the vicinity of diabolic and exceptional points. We show that the geometric phase associated with the degeneracy points is defined by the flux of complex magnetic monopoles. In the limit of weak coupling, the leading contribution to the real part of the geometric phase is given by the flux of the Dirac monopole plus a quadrupole term, and the expansion of the imaginary part starts with a dipole-like field. For a two-level system governed by a generic non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, we derive a formula to compute the non-adiabatic, complex, geometric phase by integrating over the complex Bloch sphere. We apply our results to study a dissipative two-level system driven by a periodic electromagnetic field and show that, in the vicinity of the exceptional point, the complex geometric phase behaves like a step-function. Studying the tunneling process near and at the exceptional point, we find two different regimes: coherent and incoherent. The coherent regime is characterized by Rabi oscillations, with a one-sheeted hyperbolic monopole emerging in this region of the parameters. The two-sheeted hyperbolic monopole is associated with the incoherent regime. We show that the dissipation results in a series of pulses in the complex geometric phase which disappear when the dissipation dies out. Such a strong coupling effect of the environment is beyond the conventional adiabatic treatment of the Berry phase.
For the realistic theoretical descriptions of quantum devices, we have to take the unavoidable coupling to their surrounding environment into account. A lot of effort in theoretical physics has been made to describe decoherence effects and the corresponding quantum to classical transition in the past. In these studies, baths are coupled to certain observables making their behavior more classical. In the most general case, a quantum device is affected by environments coupled to different observables. In this thesis, we study the differences emerging from coupling the bath to different observables. In particular, we investigate the situation, where two baths are coupled simultaneously to two conjugate variables (e.g. xˆ and pˆ, denoted dissipative frustration). We study how the interplay of these two baths can lead to interesting effects. After an introduction of the topic, we discuss the results of this thesis in Part II and Part III. In Part II, we study the effect of quantum tunneling in presence of a dissipative interaction with two Ohmic environments to the position xˆ and/or to the momentum pˆ of a particle. In chapter 2, we consider a symmetric double well potential which is important in the context of coherent state preparation, as its ground state is a superposition of being in the left and in the right well. Using the semiclassical approximation to calculate instanton paths within the path integral method, we find that momentum dissipation enhances the coherent tunnel splitting. In presence of dissipative couplings to xˆ and pˆ, the momentum dissipation acts in favor of the delocalization of the particle shifting the critical coupling strength of the dissipative phase transition induced by the position dissipation. Chapter 3 contains a study of the escape rate out of a metastable well in presence of dissipation. Here we find that the incoherent tunneling rate is exponentially enhanced in presence of momentum dissipation. We further show that the influence of momentum dissipation depends on the slope of the part of barrier the particle escaping through. In presence of both dissipative couplings, we find a non-monotonic behavior of the escape rate as a function of the dissipative couplings strengths. In Part III, we show that it is possible to realize the situation of "dissipative frustration" in Josephson junction chains. In particular, we introduce charge dissipation as a physical realization of the afore introduced momentum coupling. After presenting the circuit elements needed for charge dissipation, we study a chain of Josephson junctions affected by Ohmic baths coupled to the charge and/or the phase. Using a self-consistent harmonic approximation, we determine the phase diagram at zero temperature which exhibits a quantum phase transition between an ordered phase, corresponding to the superconducting state, and a disordered phase, corresponding to the insulating state with localized superconducting charge. Interestingly, we find that the critical line separating the two phases has a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the dissipative coupling strength. Moreover, within the self-consistent harmonic approximation, we analyze the dissipation induced crossover between a first and second order phase transition, showing that dissipative frustration increases the range in which the phase transition is second order. The non-monotonic behavior is also reflected in the purity of the system that quantifies the degree of correlation between the system and the environment, and in the logarithmic negativity as an entanglement measure that encodes the internal quantum correlations in the chain.
The Berry phase is a geometric phase acquired during adiabatic evolution over a closed loop in parameter space. It plays an essential role in geometric quantum gates and other phase-based protocols. In non-Hermitian systems, the Berry phase is complex, introducing fundamentally new geometric effects, including state amplification. In this work, we report experimental measurement of both the real and imaginary components of a Berry phase in a fully quantum system using a superconducting transmon circuit with engineered dissipation. We also demonstrate the path-dependent effects of the imaginary part on the dissipation and its utility in the implementation of non-unitary quantum control. These findings establish a clear geometric distinction between the real and imaginary components of the Berry phase and experimentally confirm the unique adiabatic behavior of non-Hermitian quantum systems.
Open many body quantum systems play a paramount role in various branches of physics, such as quantum information, nonlinear optics or condensed matter. The dissipative character of open systems has gained a lot of interest especially within the fields of quantum optics, due to unprecedented stabilization of quantum coherence, and quantum information, with its desire to control environmental degrees of freedom. We look beyond the typical mechanism of dissipation associated with an external source and show that strongly interacting many particle systems can create quantum decoherence within themselves. We study a quantum bosonic two-dimensional many body system with extended interactions between particles. Analytical calculations show that the system can be driven out of its coherent state, which is prevalent among commonly used setups. However, we also observe a revival of the superfluid phase within the same framework for sufficiently large interaction strength. The breakdown of quantum coherence is inevitable, but can be misinterpreted if one assumes improper coupling between the constituents of the many particle system. We show an adequate path to retrieve physically relevant results and consider its limitations. The system displays a natural cutoff that enforces the breakdown of superfluidity.