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The Journal of Chemical Physics

Tunneling, decoherence, and entanglement of two spins interacting with a dissipative bath

Mohammad Mehdi Sahrapour, Nancy Makri

Published Mar 20, 2013• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We use numerically exact iterative path integral methods to investigate the decoherence and entanglement dynamics of a tunneling pair of two coupled qubits (spins) system interacting with a dissipative bath. We find that decoherence is generally accompanied by the destruction of entanglement, although the specifics of this destruction depend sensitively on the parameters of the Hamiltonian (qubit-qubit coupling and/or energy bias), the strength of dissipation, the temperature, and the choice of initial condition. We also observe that dissipation can in some cases generate a substantial amount of entanglement. Finally, if an entangled eigenstate exists which does not couple to the environment, the long-time entanglement can significantly exceed the value corresponding to the Boltzmann equilibrium state.

DOI
10.1063/1.4795159

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We use numerically exact iterative path integral methods to investigate the decoherence and entanglement dynamics of a tunneling pair of two coupled qubits (spins) system interacting with a dissipative bath. We find that decoherence is generally accompanied by the destruction of entanglement, although the specifics of this destruction depend sensitively on the parameters of the Hamiltonian (qubit-qubit coupling and/or energy bias), the strength of dissipation, the temperature, and the choice of initial condition. We also observe that dissipation can in some cases generate a substantial amount of entanglement. Finally, if an entangled eigenstate exists which does not couple to the environment, the long-time entanglement can significantly exceed the value corresponding to the Boltzmann equilibrium state.
We study decoherence induced on a two-level system coupled to a one-dimensional quantum spin chain. We consider the cases where the dynamics of the chain is determined by the Ising, XYXYXY, or Heisenberg exchange Hamiltonian. This model of quantum baths can be of fundamental importance for the understanding of decoherence in open quantum systems, since it can be experimentally engineered by using atoms in optical lattices. As an example, here we show how to implement a pure dephasing model for a qubit system coupled to an interacting spin bath. We provide results that go beyond the case of a central spin coupled uniformly to all the spins of the bath, in particular showing what happens when the bath enters different phases, or becomes critical; we also study the dependence of the coherence loss on the number of bath spins to which the system is coupled and we describe a coupling-independent regime in which decoherence exhibits universal features, irrespective of the system-environment coupling strength. Finally, we establish a relation between decoherence and entanglement inside the bath. For the Ising and the XYXYXY models we are able to give an exact expression for the decay of coherences, while for the Heisenberg bath we resort to the numerical time-dependent density matrix renormalization group.
The decoherence and entanglement dynamics of two interacting qubits coupled through Heisenberg XY interactions to a spin bath in thermal equilibrium are studied. The exact form of the reduced density matrix is derived for finite and infinite numbers of environmental spins. It is shown that decoherence can be minimized at low bath temperatures and strong coupling between the qubits. Some initial product states evolve into entangled ones, initially entangled states lose completely or partially their entanglement. The relation between the fidelity and the concurrence is also investigated.
We review an iterative path integral method that allows the computation of exact, long-time dynamics of small systems interacting with a dissipative bath. The method takes advantage of the finite memory of large environments at finite temperature to allow an iterative evaluation of the dynamics, thereby replacing an exponential scaling in simulation time with a linear scaling. This method is applied to calculate the dynamics of two model systems. The first consists of two-qubits interacting with a common bath. In this case we observe a variety of entanglement effects. If the qubits are initially separable, through an indirect coupling, the bath can create steady state entanglement between the qubits. This effect is due to the existence of a decoherence-free subspace as a result of the form of the qubit Hamiltonian and system-bath coupling. Entanglement created by the bath is shown to decrease with increasing temperature and system-bath coupling strength. However large system-bath coupling causes a faster increase in the entanglement. Initially entangled qubits lose their entanglement as a result of interactions with the bath, an effect that is heightened at higher temperatures. Direct coupling between the qubits is shown to slow the decay of entanglement and preserve some entanglement at long times; however at high temperatures this steady state entanglement becomes negligible. The second system we consider is vibrational degree of freedom coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators or two-level systems. We compute four-time correlation functions which are used to calculate response functions relevant to third order infrared or seventh order Raman experiments for harmonic, Morse, and quadratic-quartic potentials. Our calculations reveal the role of potential features (anharmonicity and eigenvalue spectrum), both on short and long time scales, on the response function. Further, thermal excitation causes dramatic changes in the appearance of the response function, introducing symmetry with respect to the main diagonal. Finally, coupling to harmonic dissipative baths leads to decay of the response function (primarily along the t3 direction) and a broadening of the peaks in its Fourier transform. At high temperatures two-level-system baths are less efficient in destroying coherence than harmonic baths of similar parameters.
The reduced dynamics of a single qubit or two qubits coupled to an interacting quantum spin bath modeled by an XXZXXZXXZ spin chain is investigated. By using the method of a time-dependent density matrix renormalization group (t-DMRG)(t\text{-DMRG})(t-DMRG), we go beyond the uniform coupling central spin model and nonperturbatively evaluate the induced decoherence and entanglement. It is shown that both the decoherence and the entanglement strongly depend on the phase of the underlying spin bath. We show that in general, spin baths can induce entanglement for an initially disentangled pair of qubits. Furthermore, when the spin bath is in the ferromagnetic phase because the qubits directly couple to the order parameter, the reduced dynamics shows an oscillatory type behavior. On the other hand, only for the paramagnetic and the antiferromagnetic phases do the initially entangled states suffer from an entanglement sudden death. By calculating the concurrence, the finite disentanglement time is mapped out for all of the phases in the phase diagram of the spin bath.
We investigate how two spatially separated qubits coupled to a common heat bath can be entangled by purely dissipative dynamics. We identify a dynamical time scale associated with the lifetime of the dissipatively generated entanglement and show that it can be much longer than either the typical single-qubit decoherence time or the time scale on which a direct exchange interaction can entangle the qubits. We give an approximate analytical expression for the long-time evolution of the qubit concurrence and propose an ion trap scheme in which such dynamics should be observable.
It has recently been shown that interactions among the spins of a bath can result in an effective suppression of the decoherence of a single qubit embedded in a multi-spin environment. However, the effects of such intrabath interaction on the dynamics of entanglement are still not well understood. Here we study the dynamics of a system composed of two entangled qubits coupled to (1) independent self-interacting spin baths, and (2) a common self-interacting spin bath. We find that, as in the case of a single qubit, strong interactions among the spins in the bath may induce an effective decoupling between the bath and the system—this in turn suppresses the loss of entanglement that a non-, or weakly, interacting bath would typically cause. However we find that the intrabath interaction strength needed to achieve such effects is much larger than in the single qubit case, especially when the two qubits share the same environment. Our results illustrate the system's size effects in the entanglement sharing condition, where the entanglement within the bath limits the entanglement between the bath and the system.