General Considerations on Relaxation

G. S. Agarwal

We demonstrate, in a very general fashion, the considerable slowing down of decoherence and relaxation by fast frequency modulation of the system-heat--bath coupling. The slowing occurs as the decoherence rates are now determined by the spectral components of bath correlations which are shifted due to fast modulation. We present several examples including the slowing down of the heating of a trapped ion, where the system-bath interaction is not necessarily Markovian.

V. M. Akulin, N. V. Karlov

A. A. Villaeys, Alex Boeglin, S. H. Lin

Stochastic theories have been used for a long time to describe relaxation as well as line-shape functions. Since the pioneering work of Kubo, these theories have gained considerable interest in the application to optical processes. While previous theories focused on stochastic descriptions of the relaxation, our emphasis is on the dynamics induced by stochastic interactions in a system undergoing relaxation and dephasing processes, including pure dephasing. All the theories based either on the Hilbert-space representation, or on the Liouvillian-space representation, but requiring spectral decomposition methods, are unable to describe these effects simultaneously. In this paper, the implications of the statistical properties of the stochastic variables on the dynamics are elucidated, and the general time evolution of a stochastic N-level system is established in the particular Markovian or weakly colored noise cases.

Nicolas G. Underwood

Abstract Consideration is given to the behaviour of de Broglie trajectories that are separated from the bulk of the Born distribution with a view to describing the quantum relaxation properties of more ‘extreme’ forms of quantum nonequilibrium. For the 2D isotropic harmonic oscillator, through the construction of what is termed the ‘drift field’, a description is given of a general mechanism that causes the relaxation of ‘extreme’ quantum nonequilibrium. Quantum states are found which do not feature this mechanism, so that relaxation may be severely delayed or possibly may not take place at all. A method by which these states may be identified, classified and calculated is given in terms of the properties of the nodes of the state. Properties of the nodes that enable this classification are described for the first time.

Brian P. Cowan