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Physical review. B, Condensed matter

Role of coherences in the relaxation of adsorbates

Henk F. Arnoldus, Thomas F. George

Published Apr 15, 1987• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Adsorbed species on a solid-state surface interact with the large number of substrate modes, which gives rise to thermal relaxation. Commonly, the temporal evolution of the quantum state of the adsorbate is described by a master equation for the level populations (vibrational bond, internal modes, etc). It is pointed out that this approach does not necessarily give a correct account of the coupling to the solid when the effective level widths become comparable to the level separations, or larger. It is shown that the evolution of the populations does not decouple any more from the time evolution of the coherences (off-diagonal matrix elements), which implies that a random-phase approximation cannot be justified, and that the density matrix of the adsorbate is not determined only by the golden-rule transition constants. Especially, the line profiles turn out to be very sensitive to the coherence-coherence couplings. Although the coherences vanish in thermal equilibrium, their time-regression operator, and hence their mutual couplings and their couplings to the populations, which determine the absorption profile, do not. This information is lost in a master-equation treatment of relaxation.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.35.5955

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Adsorbed species on a solid-state surface interact with the large number of substrate modes, which gives rise to thermal relaxation. Commonly, the temporal evolution of the quantum state of the adsorbate is described by a master equation for the level populations (vibrational bond, internal modes, etc). It is pointed out that this approach does not necessarily give a correct account of the coupling to the solid when the effective level widths become comparable to the level separations, or larger. It is shown that the evolution of the populations does not decouple any more from the time evolution of the coherences (off-diagonal matrix elements), which implies that a random-phase approximation cannot be justified, and that the density matrix of the adsorbate is not determined only by the golden-rule transition constants. Especially, the line profiles turn out to be very sensitive to the coherence-coherence couplings. Although the coherences vanish in thermal equilibrium, their time-regression operator, and hence their mutual couplings and their couplings to the populations, which determine the absorption profile, do not. This information is lost in a master-equation treatment of relaxation.
Adsorbed atoms on the surface of a harmonic lattice are immersed in a strong laser field. The optical Bloch equations are derived, which include the thermal relaxation and the coherent excitation of the adbond. This is accomplished by a transformation to dressed states, which diagonalizes the interaction with the laser. The single-phonon couplings are then understood as transitions between dressed states. The radiative contributions for arbitrarily strong fields are obtained in the master equation, and it is shown that the coherences with respect to the dressed states decay exponentially, due to the phonon relaxation. General properties of the competing phonon-induced redistribution and optical excitation of the level populations are presented, and exemplified by an explicit elaboration of a three-level system. The results are amenable to analytical evaluation once the interaction potential is prescribed, and extensions of the approach to include multiphonon processes are straightforward.
A quantum model of a heterogeneous system consisting of a mixture of isotopes adsorbed on a solid surface and subjected to laser radiation is presented. The model system is described by a total Hamiltonian including direct and indirect (surface-phonon-mediated) couplings. The equations of motion are derived in the Heisenberg–Markovian picture in which the many-body effects of the surface phonon modes and the adspecies are reduced to an overall broadening (damping factor) given by the sum of the energy (T1) and phase (T 2) relaxations. The effects of the dephasing and anharmonicity on the average excitation are investigated. The ‘‘bistability’’ feature with a red-shifted optimal detuning is discussed in terms of the solution of a cubic equation. A diagonalization procedure is presented in a new basis which reveals the effects of the coupling strength, the frequency difference, and the level width of the isotopes on the total steady-state excitation, which in turn reflects the surface spectrum of the model system. Finally, the isotope selectivity given by the numerical results of the time-integrated excitation is discussed. It is shown that the optimal detuning for a weak coupling strength is further red-shifted for a strong isotopic coupling strength. Finally, energy feedback effects of the bath modes on the excitations of the active modes are investigated by combining a quantum excitation equation and a classical heat diffusion equation.
Abstract This chapter introduces the density operator and the Liouville equation and outlines how reduced dynamical description of open quantum systems naturally leads to the appearance of relaxation processes. (1) The density operator and the quantum Liouville equation (the density matrix for a pure system, statistical mixtures, representations, coherences, thermodynamic equilibrium). (2) An example: The time evolution of a two-level system in the density matrix formalism. (3) Reduced descriptions. (4) Time evolution equations for reduced density operators: The quantum master equation (projection operators, The Nakajima–Zwanzig equation, Derivation of the quantum master equation using the thermal projector, The quantum master equation in the interaction representation, The Markovian limit—the Redfield equation, The secular approximation and the Lindblad equation). (5) The Lindblad equation in the ‘Heisenberg representation’. (6) Relaxation of a two-level system and a harmonic oscillator revisited. (7) The optically driven two-level system in a thermal environment—the Bloch equations. (8) The oscillating dipole model of a two-level molecule. (9) Analogy of a coupled two-level system to a spin ½ system in a magnetic field.
Open quantum systems with nearly degenerate energy levels have been shown to exhibit long-lived metastable states in the approach to equilibrium, even when modelled with certain Lindblad-form quantum master equations. This is a result of dramatic separation of timescales due to differences between Liouvillian eigenvalues. These metastable states often have nonzero coherences that die off only in the long-time limit once the system reaches thermal equilibrium. We examine two distinct situations that give rise to this effect: one in which dissipative dynamics couple together states only within a nearly degenerate subspace, and one in which they give rise to jumps over finite-energy splittings, between nearly degenerate subspaces. We find, in each case, that a change of basis can often lead to a representation that more naturally captures the impact of the system-bath interaction than does the energy eigenbasis, revealing that separate timescales are associated with separate processes (e.g., decoherence into a nonenergy eigenbasis, decay of population correlations to the initial state). This approach is paired with the inspection of quantum trajectories, which further provide intuition as to how open system evolution is characterized when coherent oscillations, thermal relaxation, and decoherence all occur simultaneously. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
The temporal evolution of rates and probabilities of transitions, induced by light between states of a molecule interacting with a dissipative medium, are derived for a Hamiltonian containing an anti-Hermitian term which describes dissipation. Our theoretical treatment introduces a biorthonormal basis set of decaying eigenstates to obtain the rates and probabilities from perturbation theory. The formalism is developed for excitation by continuous and pulsed light. As an example, it is applied to the excitation of molecules adsorbed on solid surfaces, taking into account the dissipation of energy into the solid as the molecule relaxes or is desorbed.
Time evolution of excited state population was studied theoretically for the system of two electronic levels coupled to two vibrational modes, which are also attached to a heat bath. In the excited state, the mutual coupling of the vibrational modes was included. It was demonstrated that excited state population relaxes faster if interacting vibrational mode dissipates its energy via vibrational mode of a smaller eigenfrequency. It was also demonstrated that fast component of excited state depopulation cannot be achieved via coherent mode-mode coupling, if the second mode is not directly coupled to the electronic inter-state transition.