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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Quantum tunneling through a dissipative barrier

Eliade N. Stefanescu, A. Sãndulescu, Paul E. Sterian

Published Mar 8, 1995• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

For a tunneling system we consider the coupling to the dissipative environment of the coordinate q, the momentum p and the potential function U(q). In the frame of the quantum theory of open systems we derive a quantum master equation, fundamental constraints and uncertainty relations. We obtain an analytical expression of the tunneling spectrum and show that at thermal equilibrium its shape entirely depends on the barrier characteristics while its amplitude is proportional to the strength of the dissipative coupling.

DOI
10.1117/12.203543

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For a tunneling system we consider the coupling to the dissipative environment of the coordinate q, the momentum p and the potential function U(q). In the frame of the quantum theory of open systems we derive a quantum master equation, fundamental constraints and uncertainty relations. We obtain an analytical expression of the tunneling spectrum and show that at thermal equilibrium its shape entirely depends on the barrier characteristics while its amplitude is proportional to the strength of the dissipative coupling.
We consider the motion of a quantum particle placed in a metastable minima of a potential well and examine the effect of interactions with the thermal reservoir at temperature T. We use the dilute, bounce approximation for the Green's function. We find a particular value of the dissipative coupling strength for which we can solve the Euler-Lagrange equations exactly, in the range of temperatures between zero and the crossover to the regime where thermal hopping dominates. We obtain analytic expressions for the tunneling rate in this temperature regime.
The tunneling probability for a system modelling macroscopic quantum tunneling is computed. We consider an open quantum system with one degree of freedom consisting of a particle trapped in a cubic potential interacting with an environment characterized by a dissipative and a diffusion parameter. A representation based on the energy eigenfunctions of the isolated system, i. e. the system uncoupled to the environment, is used to write the dynamical master equation for the reduced Wigner function of the open quantum system. This equation becomes very simple in that representation. The use of the WKB approximation for the eigenfunctions suggests an approximation which allows an analytic computation of the tunneling rate, in this real time formalism, when the system is initially trapped in the false ground state. We find that the decoherence produced by the environment suppresses tunneling in agreement with results in other macroscopic quantum systems with different potentials. We confront our analytical predictions with an experiment where the escape rate from the zero voltage state was measured for a current-biased Josephson junction shunted with a resistor.
Quantum tunnelling induces transitions not only through potential barriers, but also through energy barriers of dynamical origin. The coupling to a noisy environment introduces dissipation which affects tunnelling. This effect is studied by an analytic non-perturbative solution of a problem involving tunnelling through a dynamical barrier in the presence of a noisy environment. The accessibility to the classically forbidden energy region above the dynamical barrier is reduced (enhanced) by the friction(diffusion) effect. The occupation of each level above the dynamical barrier is characterized by the succession in time of two different regimes. The transition between both regimes is ruled by an energy criterion which is discussed.
The position-momentum uncertainty relations containing the dependence of their quantum bounds on state purity parameter μμμ are discussed in context of possibilities to influence on the potential barrier transparency by means of decoherence processes. The behavior of barrier transparency DDD is shown to satisfy the condition μ−1ln⁡D=constμ^{-1}\ln D=constμ−1lnD=const. The particular case of thermal state with temperature TTT where the purity parameter is a function of temperature is considered. For large temperature the condition for the barrier transparency is shown to be Tln⁡D=constT\ln D=constTlnD=const.