We treat the question of the low temperature behavior of the dephasing rate of the electrons in the presence of elastic spin disorder scattering and interactions. In the frame of a self-consistent diagrammatic treatment, we obtain saturation of the dephasing rate in the limit of low temperature for magnetic scattering, in agreement with the non-interacting case. The magnitude of the dephasing rate is set by the strength of the magnetic scattering rate. We discuss the agreement of our results with relevant experiments.
We treat the question of the low temperature behavior of the dephasing rate of the electrons in the presence of elastic spin disorder scattering and interactions. In the frame of a self-consistent diagrammatic treatment, we obtain saturation of the dephasing rate in the limit of low temperature for magnetic scattering, in agreement with the non-interacting case. The magnitude of the dephasing rate is set by the strength of the magnetic scattering rate. We discuss the agreement of our results with relevant experiments.
The Luttinger liquid model, which describes interacting electrons in a single-channel quantum wire, is completely integrable in the absence of disorder and as such does not exhibit any relaxation to equilibrium. We consider relaxation processes induced by inelastic electron-electron interactions in a disordered Luttinger liquid, focusing on the equilibration rate and its essential differences from the electron-electron scattering rate as well as the rate of phase relaxation. In the first part of the paper, we review the basic concepts in a disordered Luttinger liquid at equilibrium. These include the elastic renormalization, dephasing, and interference-induced localization. In the second part, we formulate a conceptually important framework for systematically studying the nonequilibrium properties of a strongly correlated (non-Fermi) Luttinger liquid. We derive a coupled set of kinetic equations for the fermionic and bosonic distribution functions that describe the evolution of a nonequilibrium Luttinger liquid. Remarkably, the energy equilibration rate in the conducting disordered quantum wire (at sufficiently high temperature, when the localization effects are suppressed by dephasing) is shown to be on the order of the rate of elastic scattering off disorder, independent of the interaction constant and temperature.
We study the transport properties of interacting electrons in a disordered quantum wire within the framework of the Luttinger liquid model. The conductivity at finite temperature is nonzero only because of inelastic electron-electron scattering. We demonstrate that the notion of weak localization is applicable to the strongly correlated one-dimensional electron system. We calculate the relevant dephasing rate, which for spinless electrons is governed by the interplay of electron-electron interaction and disorder, thus vanishing in the clean limit.
In this work, we study the transport properties of the anisotropic Heisenberg model in a disordered magnetic field and in the presence of dephasing due to external degrees of freedom. Without dephasing, the model can display, depending on parameter values, the whole range of possible transport regimes: ideal ballistic conduction, diffusive, or ideal insulating behavior. We show that the presence of dephasing induces normal diffusive transport in a wide range of parameters. We also analyze the dependence of spin conductivity on the dephasing strength. In addition, by analyzing the decay of the spin–spin correlation function, we find a long-range order for finite chain sizes. All our results for a one-dimensional spin chain at infinite temperature can be equivalently rephrased for strongly interacting disordered spinless fermions.
As a potential window on transitions out of the ergodic, many-body-delocalized phase, we study the dephasing of weakly disordered, quasi-one-dimensional fermion systems due to a diffusive, non-Markovian noise bath. Such a bath is self-generated by the fermions, via inelastic scattering mediated by short-ranged interactions. The ergodic phase can be defined by the nonzero dephasing rate, which makes transport incoherent and classical on long length scales. We calculate the dephasing of weak localization perturbatively through second order in the bath coupling, obtaining a short-time expansion. However, no well-defined dephasing rate can be identified, and the expansion breaks down at long times. This perturbative expansion is not stabilized by including a mean-field cooperon ``mass'' (decay rate), signaling a failure of the self-consistent Born approximation. We also consider a many-channel quantum wire where short-ranged, spin-exchange interactions coexist with screened Coulomb interactions. We calculate the dephasing rate, treating the short-ranged interactions perturbatively and the Coulomb interaction exactly. The latter provides a physical infrared regularization that stabilizes perturbation theory at long times, giving the first controlled calculation of quasi-1D dephasing due to diffusive noise. At first order in the diffusive bath coupling, we find an enhancement of the dephasing rate, but at second order, we find a rephasing contribution. Our results differ qualitatively from those obtained via self-consistent calculations commonly employed in higher dimensions. Our results are relevant in two different contexts: first, in the search for precursors to many-body localization in the ergodic phase of an isolated many-fermion system. Second, our results provide a mechanism for the enhancement of dephasing at low temperatures in spin SU(2)-symmetric quantum wires, beyond the Altshuler-Aronov-Khmelnitsky result. The enhancement is possible due to the amplification of the triplet-channel interaction strength and provides an additional physical mechanism that could contribute to the experimentally observed low-temperature saturation of the dephasing time.
We explore the inelastic electron-scattering cross section off a metallic quantum dot close to the Stoner instability. We focus on the regime of strong Coulomb blockade in which the scattering cross section is dominated by the cotunneling processes. For large enough exchange interaction, the quantum dot acquires a finite total spin in the ground state. In this so-called mesoscopic Stoner instability regime, we find that at low enough temperatures, the inelastic scattering cross section (including the contribution due to an elastic electron spin flip) for an electron with an energy close to the chemical potential is different from the case of a magnetic impurity with the same spin. This difference stems from (i) the presence of low-lying many-body states of a quantum dot and (ii) the correlations of the tunneling amplitudes. Our results provide a possible explanation for the absence of the dephasing rate saturation at low temperatures in a recent experiment [N. Teneh, A. Yu. Kuntsevich, V. M. Pudalov, and M. Reznikov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 226403 (2012)] in which the existence of local spin droplets in disordered electron liquid has been unraveled.
Molecular spins are promising candidates for quantum information science, leveraging coherent electronic spin states for quantum sensing and computation. However, the practical application of these systems is hindered by electronic spin decoherence, driven by interactions with nuclear spins in the molecule and the surrounding environment at low temperatures. Predicting dephasing dynamics remains a formidable challenge due to the complexity of the spin bath. In this work, we develop a non-Markovian time-convolutionless master equation to treat an electronic spin coupled to a nuclear-spin bath. By relating ab initio electronic structure parameters directly to the decoherence dynamics, we provide a framework that accounts for pure dephasing in the low-temperature limit. We apply this method to a series of molecular qubit candidates and demonstrate good agreement with experimental relaxation trends. This approach offers a computationally efficient path for the prediction of low-temperature decoherence trends in molecular spin systems.