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Journal of the Physical Society of Japan

Decoherence in Quantum Environment at Finite Temperature

Sachiko Kitajima, Fumiaki Shibata

Published Aug 15, 2003• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum mechanical decoherence process is studied with the use of a boson detector model. Generalizing the previous method, thermal effect is taken into account: Coherence of an incident particle is destroyed in interaction with its surroundings at finite temperature. Vanishing of off-diagonal elements of a reduced density matrix is rigorously shown when the detector (surroundings) is composed of a large number of constituents and/or its temperature is very high. The temperature effect reveals itself through a renormalization of interaction strength between an incident particle and the detector. Time evolution of the von Neumann entropy is explicitly determined.

DOI
10.1143/jpsj.72.1899

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Quantum mechanical decoherence process is studied with the use of a boson detector model. Generalizing the previous method, thermal effect is taken into account: Coherence of an incident particle is destroyed in interaction with its surroundings at finite temperature. Vanishing of off-diagonal elements of a reduced density matrix is rigorously shown when the detector (surroundings) is composed of a large number of constituents and/or its temperature is very high. The temperature effect reveals itself through a renormalization of interaction strength between an incident particle and the detector. Time evolution of the von Neumann entropy is explicitly determined.
Dynamics of quantum information channel is studied with the use of a boson detector model. Explicit results are given for quantum dense coding process on the basis of an equivalence relation between a classical capacity and von Neumann mutual information. Reduced density matrices for an entangled spin degree of freedom of an incoming particle are exactly solved to give complete time evolution under influence of fluctuations due to a detector. Quantum mechanical channel matrix and the classical capacity are determined as functions of time and temperature. Decoherence properties of the entangled states under quantum and thermal noises are fully discussed.
We study the quantum decoherence of a bound state interacting with a reservoir of strongly interacting matter within the framework of open quantum systems. The bound state is modeled as a quantum harmonic oscillator whose parameters are tuned to reproduce the root-mean-square radius of J/ΨJ/ΨJ/Ψ particle. The surrounding medium, representing the many degrees of freedom of strongly interacting matter, acts as an environment that induces dissipation and decoherence through system-reservoir coupling. By analyzing the time evolution of the reduced density matrix, we quantify the loss of quantum coherence and its dependence on medium properties. Subsequently, we extend the model by introducing a time dependence in the system-thermal bath coupling, thereby simulating a temperature evolution similar to that occurring during the expansion of a fireball in the central region of heavy-ion collisions. We find that a temperature evolution has a relevant impact on the way the system loses coherence through the coupling with the expanding medium. Finally, we estimate the impact of the time-dependent temperature on the decoherence process, also analyzing a scenario that includes viscous effects without finding a significant change with respect to ideal hydrodynamical evolution.
We study the decoherence of a renormalized quantum field theoretical system. We consider our novel correlator approach to decoherence where entropy is generated by neglecting observationally inaccessible correlators. Using out-of-equilibrium field theory techniques at finite temperatures, we show that the Gaussian von Neumann entropy for a pure quantum state asymptotes to the interacting thermal entropy. The decoherence rate can be well described by the single particle decay rate in our model. Connecting to electroweak baryogenesis scenarios, we moreover study the effects on the entropy of a changing mass of the system field. Finally, we compare our correlator approach to existing approaches to decoherence in the simple quantum mechanical analogue of our field theoretical model. The entropy following from the perturbative master equation suffers from physically unacceptable secular growth.
In this review, we discuss the decoherence and thermalization of a quantum spin system interacting with a spin bath environment, by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation of the whole system. The effects of the topologic structure and the initial state of the environment on the decoherence of the two-spin and many-spin system are discussed. The role of different spin-spin coupling is considered. We show under which conditions the environment drives the reduced density matrix of the system to a fully decoherent state, and how the diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix approach those expected for the system in the microcanonical or canonical ensemble, depending on the character of the additional integrals of motion. Our demonstration does not rely on time-averaging of observables nor does it assume that the coupling between system and bath is weak. Our findings show that the microcanonical distribution (in each eigenenergy subspace) and canonical ensemble are states that may result from pure quantum dynamics, suggesting that quantum mechanics may be regarded as the foundation of quantum statistical mechanics. Furthermore, our numerical results show that a fully decoherent quantum system prefers to stay in an equilibrium state with a maximum entropy, indicating the validity of the second law of thermodynamics in the decoherence process.
We consider the entanglement evolution of two qubits embedded into disordered multiconnected environment.We model the environment and its interaction with qubits by large random matrices allowing for a possibility to describe environments of meso-and even nanosize.We obtain general formulas for the time dependent reduced density matrix of the qubits corresponding to several cases of the qubit-environment interaction and initial condition.We then workout an analog of Born-Markov approximation to find the evolution of the widely used entanglement quantifiers: the concurrence, the negativity and the quantum discord.We show that even in this approximation the time evolution of the reduced density matrix can be non-Markovian, thereby describing certain memory effects due to the backaction of the environment on qubits.In particular, we find the vanishing of the entanglement at finite moments and its subsequent revivals (entanglement sudden death and entanglement sudden birth).Our results, partly known and partly new, can be viewed as a manifestation of the universality of certain properties of decoherent qubit evolution which have been found previously in various versions of bosonic macroscopic environment.
Entropy dynamics of the Coleman–Hepp and the boson detector models are solved by calculating the von Neumann entropy exactly. This is done with the use of our previous results of the density matrices and newly obtained entropy formulae. Randomization and recoherence are found for spin entropy of an incident particle of the CH model when an interaction is strong whereas a staircase increase is observed for the weaker interaction. For the boson detector model, a monotonous time evolution of the entropy is found for arbitrary strength of interaction. Entropy dynamics for detector systems are also determined. Response of the detector depends on the interaction strength, magnitude of detector spins and number of constituent elements of the detectors. Reciprocity relation of entropy between an incident particle and a constituent detector element is found.