Evolution of vibrational excitation of an adsorbed atom

Jui‐Teng Lin, X. Y. Huang, Thomas F. George

Thomas Stegmann, Yenni P. Ortiz, T. H. Seligman

Lithium adsorption on aromatic molecules and polyacenes have been found to produce strong distortions associated to spontaneous symmetry breaking and lesser ones in more general cases. For polyphenyls we find similar, but more varied behaviour; an important feature is the fact that adsorption largely suppresses the torsion present in naked polyphenyl. The spectra of the vibrational modes distinguish the different structures of skeletons and adsorbates. In the more regular adsorption schemes the lowest states are bending and torsion modes of the skeleton, which are essential followed by the adsorbate. Based on this we propose the possible use of such a chain of adsorbates on a chain of benzene rings as a quantum register with the lowest vibrations transmitting qubits for control gates. To strengthen this view and to show the effect of heavier alkalines we also present the very symmetric adsorption of ten rubidium atoms on pentaphenyl.

Geunsik Kim

Henk F. Arnoldus, Thomas F. George

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.

Ivan Anzanello

V. M. Akulin, Nikolai V. Karlov