Physical Review A
Relaxation induced by colored noise: Analytical results for multilevel systems
Laura Andreozzi, Claudio Donati, M. Giordano, D. Leporini
Abstract
We investigate the relaxation of multilevel systems under the influence of stochastic fields with finite correlation time ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathit{c}}$. First, we study a system with spin S=1/2 in a static magnetic field in the presence of dichotomic perturbations. The spectra of the components of the averaged spin vector S\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{} are evaluated exactly by resorting to the memory-function approach. The model is then extended to include the influence on the relaxation of S\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{} of a different species with spin I=1/2. The relaxation rates ${\mathit{T}}_{1}$ and ${\mathit{T}}_{2}$ are given in terms of cumulant expansions and compared with the exact results. Fourth-order calculations recover the inequality ${\mathit{T}}_{2}$/2${\mathit{T}}_{1}$\ensuremath{\le}1 for correlated noise fields. Furthermore, it is found that ${\mathit{T}}_{1}$ can be defined also for long ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathit{c}}$. ${\mathit{T}}_{1}$ is longer than ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathit{c}}$ provided that ${\mathit{r}}^{(\mathrm{est})}$1, where ${\mathit{r}}^{(\mathrm{est})}$ is the squared ratio between the total amplitude of the fluctuating fields and the largest one between the Larmor frequency and 1/${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\tau}}}_{\mathit{c}}$. It is also found that 2${\mathit{r}}^{(\mathrm{est})}$ is an upper bound of the relative error between the exact and the second-order cumulant expansion of ${\mathit{T}}_{1}$. Generalizations on systems with S=1/2, I>1/2, and arbitrary kinds of noise are discussed.