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Chinese Physics B

Coherent–incoherent transition in the spin–boson model with a super-ohmic bath

Xie You-Lan, Zhide Chen

Published Nov 1, 2009• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The temperature effect on tunnelling splitting in the spin–boson model with a super-ohmic bath is studied by the small polaron theory. The coherent–incoherent transition temperature is calculated and its dependence on dissipation strength and bare tunnelling splitting is analysed. In additional to the traditional transition point described in textbooks, a new kind of transition is found in the low dissipation region, showing different temperature dependence in the transition. The relation to the corresponding transition in the polaron–phonon system is also discussed.

DOI
10.1088/1674-1056/18/11/071

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The temperature effect on tunnelling splitting in the spin–boson model with a super-ohmic bath is studied by the small polaron theory. The coherent–incoherent transition temperature is calculated and its dependence on dissipation strength and bare tunnelling splitting is analysed. In additional to the traditional transition point described in textbooks, a new kind of transition is found in the low dissipation region, showing different temperature dependence in the transition. The relation to the corresponding transition in the polaron–phonon system is also discussed.
We study the spin-boson model with a sub-Ohmic bath using a variational method. The transition from coherent dynamics to incoherent tunneling is found to be abrupt as a function of the coupling strength $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and to exist for any power 0<s<10<s<10<s<1, where the bath coupling is described by $J(\ensuremath{\omega})\ensuremath{\sim}\ensuremath{\alpha}{\ensuremath{\omega}}^{s}$. We find nonmonotonic temperature dependence of the two-level gap $\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{K}$ and a reentrance regime close to the transition due to nonadiabatic low-frequency bath modes. Differences between thermodynamic and dynamic conditions for the transition as well as the limitations of the simplified bath description are discussed.
The existing studies of the temperature effect of the spin-boson model show that the tunneling splitting will increase with temperature, no matter how weak the couplings are between the bath and the spin. However, the small polaron theory said that in the weak coupling and low temperature regime, the tunneling is, in fact, dominated by the diagonal transitions whereas this diagonal contribution to the tunneling should be faded away with increasing temperature. Taking advantage of the analysis originated from the Feynman-Vernon's influence functional theory, the influence on the tunneling by the phonon bath can be expressed as a product of the effects of every single phonon mode, which can be studied by numerical exact diagonalization. We find that, in the weak coupling and low temperature regime, all the spin-single-mode systems exhibit the same decreasing dependence of tunneling on increasing temperature. In turn, with the conclusion of influence functional theory, the tunneling of the spin-boson model should decrease and it is independent of the bath structure. In the strong coupling regime, however, the temperature effect reverses from suppressing to enhancing the tunneling with the increase of temperature. Discrepancies between the old theories and the small polaron theory are also explained.
The quantum dynamics of a two-level system coupled to an Ohmic spin bath is studied by means of the perturbation approach based on a unitary transformation. A scattering function xi(k) is introduced in the transformation to take into account quantum fluctuations. By the master equation within the Born approximation, nonequilibrium dynamics quantities are calculated. The method works well for the coupling constant 0<alpha<alpha(c) and a finite bare tunneling Delta. It is found that (i) only at zero temperature with small coupling or moderate one does the spin-spin-bath model display identical behavior as the well-known spin-boson-bath model; (ii) in comparison with the known results of spin-boson-bath model, the coherence-incoherence transition point, which occurs at alpha(c)=12[1+etaDelta/omega(c)], is temperature independent; and (iii) the nonequilibrium correlation function P(t)=tau(z)(t), evolves without temperature dependence, while tau(x)(t) depends on temperature. Both P(t) and tau(x)(t) not only satisfy their initial conditions, respectively, and also have correct long time limits. Besides, the Shiba relation and sum rule are exactly satisfied in the coherent regime for this method. Our results show that increasing temperature does not help the system suppress decoherence in the coherent regime, i.e., finite temperature does not favor the coherent dynamics in this regime. Thus, the finite-temperature dynamics induced by two kinds of baths (spin-bath and boson-bath) exhibit distinctly different physics.
The dynamics of the spin-boson model with an Ohmic bath at finite temperature is studied by a variational calculation. Numerical solution of the self-consistent equation derived from the variational method shows that the transition from incoherent to coherent phases is discontinuous. It indicates that ( T = 0, s = 1) is a tricritical point, i.e. the transition changes from continuous to discontinuous by tuning from T = 0 to T ≠0. The discontinuous transition at finite temperature is analysed by Landau theory and the relation to the experimental observation on the coherent state is also discussed.
The Dirac-Frenkel time-dependent variation is employed to probe the dynamics of the zero temperature sub-Ohmic spin-boson model with strong friction utilizing the Davydov D1 ansatz. It is shown that initial conditions of the phonon bath have considerable influence on the dynamics. Counterintuitively, even in the very strong coupling regime, quantum coherence features still manage to survive under the polarized bath initial condition, while such features are absent under the factorized bath initial condition. In addition, a coherent-incoherent transition is found at a critical coupling strength α ≈ 0.1 for s = 0.25 under the factorized bath initial condition. We quantify how faithfully our ansatz follows the Schrödinger equation, finding that the time-dependent variational approach is robust for strong dissipation and deep sub-Ohmic baths (s ≪ 1).
The influence of dissipation on quantum tunneling in the spin-boson model with a sub-Ohmic bath is studied by a variational calculation. By examining the evolution of solutions of the variational equation with the coupling strength near the phase boundary, we are able to present a scenario of discontinuous transition in sub-Ohmic dissipation case in accord with Ginzburg-Landau theory. Based on the constructed picture, it is shown that the critical point found in the general way is not thermodynamically the critical point, but the point where the second energy minimum begins to develop. The true cross-over point is calculated and the obtained phase diagram is in agreement with the result of numerical renormalization group calculation.