The dissipative dynamics of a quantum bistable system coupled to a Ohmic heat bath is investigated beyond the spin-boson approximation. Within the path-integral approach to quantum dissipation, we propose an approximation scheme which exploits the separation of time scales between intra- and interwell (tunneling) dynamics. The resulting generalized master equation for the populations in a space localized basis enables us to investigate a wide range of temperatures and system-environment coupling strengths. A phase diagram in the coupling-temperature space is provided to give a comprehensive account of the different dynamical regimes.
We study dissipative phase transitions in a system of two coupled fully-connected quantum Ising models interacting with an environment. The dynamics is governed by a Lindblad master equation combining coherent unitary evolution and incoherent dissipative processes, where the unitary part is described within a self-consistent mean-field framework effectively acting on the local Hilbert space of two coupled spins at each site. We analyze two fundamentally different classes of dissipators. In the first case, the jump operators are defined in the instantaneous eigenbasis of the mean-field Hamiltonian and satisfy a detailed-balance condition. In this setting, the relaxation dynamics depends strongly on the quench protocol: a parametric quench of the Hamiltonian leads to conventional relaxation, whereas a temperature quench gives rise to a dynamical phase transition characterized by nonanalytic behavior in time. Yet, in both cases, the system relaxes toward a steady state determined solely by the post-quench parameters and the bath temperature, which closely resembles a thermal Gibbs state of the mean-field Hamiltonian. As a result, the dissipative phase transition occurs at a critical point consistent with the corresponding equilibrium transition. In contrast, when the dissipators are realized via local spin raising and lowering operators, the steady state is genuinely nonequilibrium, leading to a significantly richer phase diagram. In particular, for sufficiently strong system-bath coupling, we observe a reentrant phase featuring a symmetry-broken region bounded by two continuous dissipative phase transitions. Our results evidence how the structure of dissipative processes controls the emergence of equilibrium-like versus genuinely nonequilibrium critical behavior in open quantum systems.
This paper presents the results of a functional-integral approach to the dynamics of a two-state system coupled to a dissipative environment. It is primarily an extended account of results obtained over the last four years by the authors; while they try to provide some background for orientation, it is emphatically not intended as a comprehensive review of the literature on the subject. Its contents include (1) an exact and general prescription for the reduction, under appropriate circumstances, of the problem of a system tunneling between two wells in the presence of a dissipative environment to the "spin-boson" problem; (2) the derivation of an exact formula for the dynamics of the latter problem; (3) the demonstration that there exists a simple approximation to this exact formula which is controlled, in the sense that we can put explicit bounds on the errors incurred in it, and that for almost all regions of the parameter space these errors are either very small in the limit of interest to us (the "slow-tunneling" limit) or can themselves be evaluated with satisfactory accuracy; (4) use of these results to obtain quantitative expressions for the dynamics of the system as a function of the spectral density $J(\ensuremath{\omega})$ of its coupling to the environment. If $J(\ensuremath{\omega})$ behaves as ${\ensuremath{\omega}}^{s}$ for frequencies of the order of the tunneling frequency or smaller, the authors find for the "unbiased" case the following results: For
s<1 the system is localized at zero temperature, and at finite
T relaxes incoherently at a rate proportional to $\mathrm{exp}\ensuremath{-}{(\frac{{T}_{0}}{T})}^{1\ensuremath{-}s}$. For
s>2 it undergoes underdamped coherent oscillations for all relevant temperatures, while for
1<s<2 there is a crossover from coherent oscillation to overdamped relaxation as
T increases. Exact expressions for the oscillation and/or relaxation rates are presented in all these cases. For the "ohmic" case,
s=1, the qualitative nature of the behavior depends critically on the dimensionless coupling strength $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ as well as the temperature
T: over most of the ($\ensuremath{\alpha}$,
T) plane (including the whole region $\ensuremath{\alpha}>1$) the behavior is an incoherent relaxation at a rate proportional to ${T}^{2\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{-}1}$, but for low
T and $0<\ensuremath{\alpha}<\frac{1}{2}$ the authors predict a combination of damped coherent oscillation and incoherent background which appears to disagree with the results of all previous approximations. The case of finite bias is also discussed.
We investigate the real-time dynamics of the sub-Ohmic spin-boson model across a broad range of coupling strengths, using the numerically exact inchworm quantum Monte Carlo algorithm. From short- and intermediate-time dynamics starting from an initially decoupled state, we extract signatures of the zero-temperature quantum phase transition between localized and delocalized states. We show that the dynamical phase diagram thus obtained differs from the equilibrium phase diagram in both the values of critical couplings and the associated values of the critical exponent. We also identify and quantitatively analyze two competing mechanisms for the crossover between coherent oscillations and incoherent decay. Deep in the sub-Ohmic regime, the crossover is driven by the damping of the oscillation amplitude, while closer to the Ohmic regime the oscillation frequency itself drops sharply to zero at large coupling.
The decoherence of a two-state system coupled with a sub-Ohmic bath is investigated theoretically by means of the perturbation approach based on a unitary transformation. It is shown that the decoherence depends strongly and sensitively on the structure of environment. Nonadiabatic effect is treated through the introduction of a function ${\ensuremath{\xi}}_{k}$ which depends on the boson frequency and renormalized tunneling. The results are as follows: (i) the nonequilibrium correlation function
P(t), the dynamical susceptibility ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{\ensuremath{''}}(\ensuremath{\omega})$, and the equilibrium correlation function
C(t) are analytically obtained for $s\ensuremath{\leqslant}1$; (ii) the phase diagram of thermodynamic transition shows the delocalized-localized transition point ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{l}$ which agrees with exact results and numerical data from the numerical renormalization group; (iii) the dynamical transition point ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$ between coherent and incoherent phase is explicitly given. A crossover from the coherent oscillation to incoherent relaxation appears with increasing coupling (for $\ensuremath{\alpha}>{\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$, the coherent dynamics disappear); (iv) the Shiba's relation and sum rule are exactly satisfied when $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\leqslant}{\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$; (v) an underdamping-overdamping transition point ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}^{*}$ exists in the function $S(\ensuremath{\omega})$. Consequently, the dynamical phase diagrams in both ohmic and sub-Ohmic case are mapped out. For $\ensuremath{\Delta}⪡{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{c}$, the critical couplings (${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{l},{\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}$, and ${\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{c}^{*}$) are proportional to ${\ensuremath{\Delta}}^{1\ensuremath{-}s}$.
The quantum dynamics of a two-level system coupled to an Ohmic spin bath is studied by means of the perturbation approach based on a unitary transformation. A scattering function xi(k) is introduced in the transformation to take into account quantum fluctuations. By the master equation within the Born approximation, nonequilibrium dynamics quantities are calculated. The method works well for the coupling constant 0<alpha<alpha(c) and a finite bare tunneling Delta. It is found that (i) only at zero temperature with small coupling or moderate one does the spin-spin-bath model display identical behavior as the well-known spin-boson-bath model; (ii) in comparison with the known results of spin-boson-bath model, the coherence-incoherence transition point, which occurs at alpha(c)=12[1+etaDelta/omega(c)], is temperature independent; and (iii) the nonequilibrium correlation function P(t)=tau(z)(t), evolves without temperature dependence, while tau(x)(t) depends on temperature. Both P(t) and tau(x)(t) not only satisfy their initial conditions, respectively, and also have correct long time limits. Besides, the Shiba relation and sum rule are exactly satisfied in the coherent regime for this method. Our results show that increasing temperature does not help the system suppress decoherence in the coherent regime, i.e., finite temperature does not favor the coherent dynamics in this regime. Thus, the finite-temperature dynamics induced by two kinds of baths (spin-bath and boson-bath) exhibit distinctly different physics.