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Berichte der Bunsengesellschaft für physikalische Chemie

Quantum Coherence in Rate Processes

Ulrich Weiß, Maura Sassetti

Published Mar 1, 1991• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract The quantum dissipative dynamics of a particle which tunnels through the barrier of a double well potential and is coupled to an Ohmic heat bath is studied. Exact formal expressions for correlation functions are presented and examined. Attention is focused on the region in which coherence effects are important, and on the algebraic long‐time tails at zero temperature. Coherence effects in the dissipative quantum transport of a particle in a tight‐binding lattice are also investigated.

DOI
10.1002/bbpc.19910950335

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Abstract The quantum dissipative dynamics of a particle which tunnels through the barrier of a double well potential and is coupled to an Ohmic heat bath is studied. Exact formal expressions for correlation functions are presented and examined. Attention is focused on the region in which coherence effects are important, and on the algebraic long‐time tails at zero temperature. Coherence effects in the dissipative quantum transport of a particle in a tight‐binding lattice are also investigated.
The coherence-to-decoherence transition is studied in a nanowire modeled as a one-dimensional tight-binding lattice in the presence of an external field and in linear interaction with a boson heat bath, characterized by Ohmic dissipation. The focus of attention is the probability propagator which quantifies the likelihood of a quantum particle, such as an electron to end up at an arbitrary site at a time ttt, given that it was at the origin initially---and from it---the particle-current and the mean-squared displacement. If the bath is absent, the probability operator exhibits quantum coherence as can be captured by say, Bloch oscillation and Wannier-Stark (dynamic) localization. The coupling with the bath---which can be weak or strong---leads to decoherence that will be quantified in the text. The Ohmic model of the spectral function of bath excitations contains a cutoff frequency, which if greater than the temperature (in energy units) defines the ``low-temperature'' regime, whereas the opposite limit implies ``high temperatures.'' Results will be presented in both these regimes separately.
For the realistic theoretical descriptions of quantum devices, we have to take the unavoidable coupling to their surrounding environment into account. A lot of effort in theoretical physics has been made to describe decoherence effects and the corresponding quantum to classical transition in the past. In these studies, baths are coupled to certain observables making their behavior more classical. In the most general case, a quantum device is affected by environments coupled to different observables. In this thesis, we study the differences emerging from coupling the bath to different observables. In particular, we investigate the situation, where two baths are coupled simultaneously to two conjugate variables (e.g. xˆ and pˆ, denoted dissipative frustration). We study how the interplay of these two baths can lead to interesting effects. After an introduction of the topic, we discuss the results of this thesis in Part II and Part III. In Part II, we study the effect of quantum tunneling in presence of a dissipative interaction with two Ohmic environments to the position xˆ and/or to the momentum pˆ of a particle. In chapter 2, we consider a symmetric double well potential which is important in the context of coherent state preparation, as its ground state is a superposition of being in the left and in the right well. Using the semiclassical approximation to calculate instanton paths within the path integral method, we find that momentum dissipation enhances the coherent tunnel splitting. In presence of dissipative couplings to xˆ and pˆ, the momentum dissipation acts in favor of the delocalization of the particle shifting the critical coupling strength of the dissipative phase transition induced by the position dissipation. Chapter 3 contains a study of the escape rate out of a metastable well in presence of dissipation. Here we find that the incoherent tunneling rate is exponentially enhanced in presence of momentum dissipation. We further show that the influence of momentum dissipation depends on the slope of the part of barrier the particle escaping through. In presence of both dissipative couplings, we find a non-monotonic behavior of the escape rate as a function of the dissipative couplings strengths. In Part III, we show that it is possible to realize the situation of "dissipative frustration" in Josephson junction chains. In particular, we introduce charge dissipation as a physical realization of the afore introduced momentum coupling. After presenting the circuit elements needed for charge dissipation, we study a chain of Josephson junctions affected by Ohmic baths coupled to the charge and/or the phase. Using a self-consistent harmonic approximation, we determine the phase diagram at zero temperature which exhibits a quantum phase transition between an ordered phase, corresponding to the superconducting state, and a disordered phase, corresponding to the insulating state with localized superconducting charge. Interestingly, we find that the critical line separating the two phases has a non-monotonic behavior as a function of the dissipative coupling strength. Moreover, within the self-consistent harmonic approximation, we analyze the dissipation induced crossover between a first and second order phase transition, showing that dissipative frustration increases the range in which the phase transition is second order. The non-monotonic behavior is also reflected in the purity of the system that quantifies the degree of correlation between the system and the environment, and in the logarithmic negativity as an entanglement measure that encodes the internal quantum correlations in the chain.
We study the dynamical equilibrium correlation function of the polaron-dressed tunneling operator in the dissipative two-state system. Unlike the position operator, this coherence operator acts in the full system-plus-reservoir space. We calculate the relevant modified influence functional and present the exact formal expression for the coherence correlations in the form of a series in the number of tunneling events. For an Ohmic spectral density with the particular damping strength K=12,K=\frac{1}{2},K=21​, the series is summed in analytic form for all times and for arbitrary values of temperature and bias. Using a diagrammatic approach, we find the long-time dynamics in the regime K<1.K<1.K<1. In general, the coherence correlations decay algebraically as ${t}^{\ensuremath{-}2K}$ at T=0.T=0.T=0. This implies that the linear static susceptibility diverges for K< 12K<~\frac{1}{2}K< 21​ as $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{T}0,$ whereas it stays finite for K>12K>\frac{1}{2}K>21​ in this limit. The qualitative differences with respect to the asymptotic behavior of the position correlations are explained.
The motion of a quantum particle in a tight-binding lattice coupled to an Ohmic thermal reservoir is analyzed in the path-integral formalism. We derive exact formal expressions for moments of the probability distribution both for noncorrelated and correlated thermal initial states of the particle-plus-reservoir complex. Based on these expressions we discuss the role of initial conditions on the subsequent motion and calculate the differences in the transient behavior. For a particular value of the damping strength we find the exact solution of the dynamics in analytic form at any time, temperature, and bias for the two kinds of initial states.
The motion of a quantum particle with Ohmic damping in a tight-binding lattice is discussed. An exact series representation in powers of the tunnelmatrix element \ensuremath{\Delta} for moments of the probability distribution is given. The dynamics at zero and at finite temperatures in the presence of an external force is solved exactly to all orders of \ensuremath{\Delta} for a particular value of the friction coefficient, \ensuremath{\eta}=\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\Elzxh}/d2{d}^{2}d2, where d is the lattice constant, and also for very weak damping.