Entanglement Dynamics of Quantum States Undergoing Decoherence from a Driven Critical Environment

XIAO SAN MA

Xiao-San Ma, Ying Qiao, Xiaodong Liu +1 more

In this paper, we have investigated the quantum entanglement of quantum states undergoing decoherence from a spin environment which drives a quantum phase transition. From our analysis, we find that the entanglement dynamics depends not only on the coupling strength but also on the external magnetic field and the number of the freedom degrees of the environment. Specially, our results imply that the decay of the entanglement can be enhanced by the quantum phase transition of the environment when the system is coupled to the environment weakly. Additionally, the discussion of the case of the multipartite states with high dimensions is made.

Bogdan Damski, H. T. Quan, Wojciech Hubert Zurek

We study dynamics of decoherence in a generic model where the environment is driven and undergoes a quantum phase transition. We model the environment by the Ising chain in the transverse field, and assume that the decohering system is a central spin-1/2. We found that when the environment is quenched slowly through the critical point, the decoherence factor of the central spin undergoes rapid decay that encodes the critical exponents of the environment. We also found that decoherence in a non-equilibrated, kink-contaminated, environment can be stronger than in a vacuum one. We derived a remarkably simple analytical expression that describes post-transition decoherence and predicts periodicities involving all system parameters. This research connects the fields of decoherence, quantum phase transitions, and Kibble-Zurek non-equilibrium dynamics.

Juan Pablo Paz, Augusto J. Roncaglia

Taiki Haga, Masaya Kunimi, Masaya Nakagawa

We investigate the nonequilibrium dynamics of strong-to-weak spontaneous symmetry breaking in many-body quantum systems undergoing decoherence from thermal pure states. For generic initial pure states with volume-law entanglement entropy, we show that the system undergoes a discontinuous dynamical phase transition at a critical time. This transition is accompanied by a singularity in the entropy of the system, which saturates to its maximum value at the same critical time. Through numerical simulations of the dephasing Ising and hard-core boson models, we establish the universality of this transition across different symmetries. Our results reveal that the dynamical emergence of a decohered mixed state from a highly entangled state is not a gradual asymptotic relaxation, but rather a sharp phase transition driven by a sudden collapse of global coherence.

X.X. Yi, H.T. Cui, X.G. Wang