Condensed matter physics at room temperature usually assumes that electrons in conductors can be described as spatially narrow wave packets—in contrast to what the Schrödinger equation would predict. How a finite-temperature environment can localize wave functions is still being debated. Here, we represent the environment by a fluctuating potential and investigate different unravellings of the Lindblad equation that describes the one-dimensional tight-binding model in the presence of such a potential. While all unravellings show a fast loss of phase coherence, only part of them lead to narrow wave packets, among them the quantum-state diffusion unravelling. Surprisingly, the decrease of the wave packet width for the quantum state diffusion model with increasing noise strength is slower than that of the phase coherence length. In addition to presenting analytical and numerical results, we also provide phenomenological explanations for them. We conclude that as long as no feedback between the wave function and the environment is taken into account, there will be no unique description of an open quantum system in terms of wave functions. We consider this to be an obstacle to understanding the quantum-classical transition.
Condensed matter physics at room temperature usually assumes that electrons in conductors can be described as spatially narrow wave packets—in contrast to what the Schrödinger equation would predict. How a finite-temperature environment can localize wave functions is still being debated. Here, we represent the environment by a fluctuating potential and investigate different unravellings of the Lindblad equation that describes the one-dimensional tight-binding model in the presence of such a potential. While all unravellings show a fast loss of phase coherence, only part of them lead to narrow wave packets, among them the quantum-state diffusion unravelling. Surprisingly, the decrease of the wave packet width for the quantum state diffusion model with increasing noise strength is slower than that of the phase coherence length. In addition to presenting analytical and numerical results, we also provide phenomenological explanations for them. We conclude that as long as no feedback between the wave function and the environment is taken into account, there will be no unique description of an open quantum system in terms of wave functions. We consider this to be an obstacle to understanding the quantum-classical transition.
We study the spreading of a quantum-mechanical wave packet in a tight-binding model with a noisy potential and analyze the emergence of classical diffusion from the quantum dynamics due to decoherence. We consider a finite correlation time of the noisy environment and treat the system by utilizing the separation of fast (dephasing) and slow (diffusion) processes. We show that classical diffusive behavior emerges at long times and we calculate analytically the dependence of the classical diffusion coefficient on the noise magnitude and correlation time. This method provides a general solution to this problem for arbitrary conditions of the noisy environment. The calculation can be done in any dimension, but we demonstrate it in one dimension for clarity of representation. The results are relevant to a large variety of physical systems, from electronic transport in solid-state physics to light transmission in optical devices, diffusion of excitons, and quantum computation.
Quantum lattices are pivotal in the burgeoning fields of quantum materials and information science. Novel experimental techniques allow the preparation and monitoring of wave packet dynamics on quantum lattices with high spatiotemporal resolution. We present an analytical study of wave packet diffusivity and diffusion length on tight-binding quantum lattices subject to stochastic noise. Our analysis reveals the crucial role of spatial coherence and predicts a set of novel phenomena: (1) noise can enhance the transient diffusivity and diffusion length of spatially extended initial states; (2) standing or traveling initial states, with large momentum, spread faster than a localized initial state and exhibit a noise-induced peak in the transient diffusivity; (3) the differences in the diffusivity or diffusion length of extended and localized initial states have a universal dependence on initial width. These predictions suggest the possibility of controlling the wave packet dynamics by spatial manipulations, which will have implications for materials science and quantum technologies.
We study the spread of a quantum-mechanical wave packet in a noisy environment, modeled using a tight-binding Hamiltonian. Despite the coherent dynamics, the fluctuating environment may give rise to diffusive behavior. When correlations between different level-crossing events can be neglected, we use the solution of the Landau-Zener problem to find how the diffusion constant depends on the noise. We also show that when an electric field or external disordered potential is applied to the system, the diffusion constant is suppressed with no drift term arising. The results are relevant to various quantum systems, including exciton diffusion in photosynthesis and electronic transport in solid-state physics.
The challenge of making nano-scale quantum systems experimentally accessible is being overcome for an increasing diversity of systems by improved fabrication techniques and experimental control. Despite rapid progress, one of the main hindrances in all experiments is the difficulty of isolating the quantum system from the surrounding environment and its fluctuations. This experimental “noise” perturbs the quantum system, a process that is generally referred to as decoherence: the system slowly loses its distinguishing quantum features. In this thesis the effects of spatial correlations in the noise environment with a finite correlation length are investigated. The consequences for the experimental design of controlled quantum systems as well as the dynamics of solid state systems are presented. We utilize the Bloch-Redfield formalism, a Markovian master equation approach, which gives a close connection to the underpinning system-environment model. We show how to use this formalism to model any spatial correlation function of the noise environment. Using microscopic environmental models, several correlation functions are derived and their properties connected to the environmental parameters. Several phenomenological correlation functions are also studied and a mapping to the Lindblad master equation is presented, which provides a test of positivity for phenomenological models. For quantum transport through spin chains and networks, noise is generally detrimental. Spatial correlations however reduce the effect of dephasing noise and can reinstate the transport dynamics. The critical correlation length proves to be closely connected to the maximal packet width of one excitation in the transfer process. For dissipation noise, relaxation-free states emerge with spatial correlations. The decay of an excitation is therefore fundamentally modified into a fast decay towards an intermediate relaxation-reduced state and a subsequent decay to the ground state on a much longer time scale. In quantum metrology noise correlations have been observed in experiments with trapped ions, in which they limit the use of such experiments for metrology. Quantum advantage, i.e. a better precision scaling than the standard quantum limit has been proven impossible in the presence of uncorrelated Markovian noise only. We show that for certain optimized states the best possible quantum advantage, Heisenberg scaling, can be achieved in the presence of noise with a finite spatial decay of correlations. We furthermore identify how dephasing effects change and a topology dependence arises in strength with increasing correlation length for entangled states in a general way. Biological photosynthetic complexes have recently been found to potentially include quantum coherent dynamics, particularly in the process of transmitting an exciton from the point of creation to the reaction centre. We show how the formalism of spatially correlated decoherence adapts to this significantly different energy regime. Typical effects of decoherence in this field are presented and we show how the light-harvesting efficiency is influenced by spatial correlations in the noise. This thesis highlights the fundamental relevance of noise correlations to several fields of quantum physics and the importance of the efficient and comprehensive modelling techniques presented.
The act of measurement on a quantum state is supposed to "dephase" (dephasing refers to the phenomenon that the states lose phase coherence; then the phases get randomized in interaction with a bath of other oscillators, which is referred to as "decoherence"), then "decohere" and "collapse" (or more precisely "register" and "reduce") the state into one of several eigenstates of the operator corresponding to the observable being measured. This measurement process is sometimes described as outside standard quantum-mechanical evolution and not calculable from Schrödinger's equation. Progress has, however, been made in studying this problem with two main calculation tools-one uses a time-independent Hamiltonian, while a rather more general approach proving that decoherence occurs under some generic conditions. The two general approaches to the study of wave-function collapse are as follows. The first approach, called the "consistent" or "decoherent"' histories approach, studies microscopic histories that diverge probabilistically and explains collapse as an event in our particular history. The other, referred to as the "environmental decoherence" approach studies the effect of the environment upon the quantum system, to explain wave-function decoherence which is produced by irreversible effects of various sorts. However, as we know, wave-function collapse is not related to thermal connection with the environment, rather, it is inherent to how measurements are performed by macroscopic apparata. In the "environmental decoherence" approach, one studies decoherence using a Markovian-approximated Master equation to study the time-evolution of the reduced density matrix (post dephasing) and obtains the long-time dependence of the off-diagonal elements of this matrix. The calculation in this paper studies the evolution of a quantum system starting with "dephasing" followed by the effects of the environment with some differences from prior analyses. We start from the Schrödinger equation for the state of the system, with a time-dependent Hamiltonian that reflects the actual microscopic interactions that are occurring. Then we systematically solve (exactly) for the time-evolved state, without invoking a Markovian approximation when writing out the effective time-evolution equation, i.e., keeping the evolution unitary until the end. This approach is useful, and it shows that the system wave-function will explicitly "un-collapse" if the measurement apparatus is sufficiently small. However, in the limit of a macroscopic system, this "dephasing" quickly leads to "decoherence"-collapse is a temporary state that will simply take extremely long (of the order of multiple universe lifetimes) to reverse. This has been attempted previously and our calculation is particularly simple and calculable. We make some connections to the work by Linden et al. while doing so. The calculation in this paper has interesting implications for the interpretation of the Wigner's friend experiment, as well as the Mott experiment, which is explored in "Connection to some general theoretical results" and "Recurrence times" (especially the enumerated points in "Recurrence times"). The upshot is that as long as Wigner's friend is macroscopically large (or uses a macroscopically large measuring instrument), no one needs to worry that Wigner would see something different from his friend. Indeed, Wigner's friend does not even need to be conscious during the measurement that she conducts. It also allows one to reasonably interpret some of the more recent thought experiments proposed. In particular, as a result of the mathematical analysis, the short-time behavior of a collapsing system, at least the one considered in this paper, is not exponential. Instead, it is the usual Fermi-golden rule result. The long-term behavior is, of course, still exponential. This is a second novel feature of the paper-we connect the short-term Fermi-golden rule (quadratic-in-time behavior) transition probability to the exponential long-time behavior of a collapsing wave-function in one continuous mathematical formulation.
We study the transport property of diffusion in a finite translationally invari-ant quantum subsystem described by a tight-binding Hamiltonian with a sin-gle energy band. The subsystem interacts with its environment by a coupling expressed in terms of correlation functions which are delta-correlated in space and time. For weak coupling, the time evolution of the subsystem density matrix is ruled by a quantum master equation of Lindblad type. Thanks to the invariance under spatial translations, we can apply the Bloch theorem to the subsystem density matrix and exactly diagonalize the time evolution superop-erator to obtain the complete spectrum of its eigenvalues, which fully describe the relaxation to equilibrium. Above a critical coupling which is inversely pro-portional to the size of the subsystem, the spectrum at given wave number con-tains an isolated eigenvalue describing diffusion. The other eigenvalues rule the decay of the populations and quantum coherences with decay rates which are proportional to the intensity of the environmental noise. An analytical expres-sion is obtained for the dispersion relation of diffusion. The diffusion coef-ficient is proportional to the square of the width of the energy band and inversely proportional to the intensity of the environmental noise because diffu-sion results from the perturbation of quantum tunneling by the environmental fluctuations in this model. Diffusion disappears below the critical coupling. KEY WORDS: Quantum transport; environment-induced diffusion; quantum