In recent years the notion of intrinsic decoherence and dephasing of a particle interacting with its environment is being investigated intensively. This has an important bearing on a plausible causal connection between incoherent c-axis resistivity and high-temperature superconductivity. In our work we study the tunnel supression and incoherent motion of a particle tunneling between two sites. The bosonic excitations of the environment are coupled to only one site inducing on-site spin flips. We show that this on-site spin flip scattering makes the tunnel motion incoherent. In the high-temperature limit incoherent rate or hopping rate has been calculated. We also briefly discuss the renormalization of the effective tunneling by environmental coupling at zero temperature following Wegner's renormalization group procedure.
In recent years the notion of intrinsic decoherence and dephasing of a particle interacting with its environment is being investigated intensively. This has an important bearing on a plausible causal connection between incoherent c-axis resistivity and high-temperature superconductivity. In our work we study the tunnel supression and incoherent motion of a particle tunneling between two sites. The bosonic excitations of the environment are coupled to only one site inducing on-site spin flips. We show that this on-site spin flip scattering makes the tunnel motion incoherent. In the high-temperature limit incoherent rate or hopping rate has been calculated. We also briefly discuss the renormalization of the effective tunneling by environmental coupling at zero temperature following Wegner's renormalization group procedure.
Following an earlier proposal that the observed temperature dependence of the normal-state c-axis resistivity of oxide superconductors can be understood as arising from the inhibition of electron transport along the c axis due to in-plane incoherent inelastic scatterings suffered by the tagged electron, we consider a specific form for the interaction Hamiltonian. In this, the tagged electron is coupled to bosonic baths at adjacent planes (the baths at any two planes being uncorrelated) and is coupled also to the intraplane momentum-flip degree of freedom via the bath degrees of freedom. Thus our model Hamiltonian incorporates the earlier proposed picture that each in-plane inelastic scattering event is like a measurement of which plane the electron is in, and this, as in the quantum Zeno effect, leads to the suppression of interplane tunneling. In the present scenario it is the baths which bring about a coupling between the intraplane and interplane degrees of freedom. For simplicity we confine ourselves to dynamics in two adjacent planes and allow for two states only, as far as momentum flips due to scattering are concerned. In the case when the intraplane dynamics is absent, our model reduces effectively to the usual spin-boson model. We solve for the reduced tunneling dynamics of the electron using a non-Markovian master equation approach. Our numerical results on the survival probability of the electron in the initial plane show that the intraplane momentum flips lead to further inhibition of the interplane tunneling over and above the inhibition effected by pure spin-boson dynamics.
Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE) is the suppression of the inter-subspace transition by a relatively fast intra-subspace decoherence. Earlier, we had proposed a QZE-based mechanism for the temperature-dependent normal-state c-axis resistivity of the layered high-Tc cuprate superconductors in which the single-particle inter-layer tunneling is blocked by the strong intra-layer decoherence (entanglement). We now argue that while the single-particle inter-layer tunneling is thus blocked, the tunneling of the bosonic BCS-like pairs must remain unblocked inasmuch as a BCS pairing condensate is an eigenstate of the pair annihilation operator. This pair tunneling stabilizes
Recent progress with microfabricated quantum devices has revealed that an ubiquitous source of noise originates in tunneling material defects that give rise to a sparse bath of parasitic two-level systems (TLSs). For superconducting qubits, TLSs residing on electrode surfaces and in tunnel junctions account for a major part of decoherence and thus pose a serious roadblock to the realization of solid-state quantum processors. Here, we utilize a superconducting qubit to explore the quantum state evolution of coherently operated TLSs in order to shed new light on their individual properties and environmental interactions. We identify a frequency-dependence of TLS energy relaxation rates that can be explained by a coupling to phononic modes rather than by anticipated mutual TLS interactions. Most investigated TLSs are found to be free of pure dephasing at their energy degeneracy points, around which their Ramsey and spin-echo dephasing rates scale linearly and quadratically with asymmetry energy, respectively. We provide an explanation based on the standard tunneling model, and identify interaction with incoherent low-frequency (thermal) TLSs as the major mechanism of the pure dephasing in coherent high-frequency TLS.
Recent progress with microfabricated quantum devices has revealed that an ubiquitous source of noise originates in tunneling material defects that give rise to a sparse bath of parasitic two-level systems (TLSs). For superconducting qubits, TLSs residing on electrode surfaces and in tunnel junctions account for a major part of decoherence and thus pose a serious roadblock to the realization of solid-state quantum processors. Here, we utilize a superconducting qubit to explore the quantum state evolution of coherently operated TLSs in order to shed new light on their individual properties and environmental interactions. We identify a frequency-dependence of TLS energy relaxation rates that can be explained by a coupling to phononic modes rather than by anticipated mutual TLS interactions. Most investigated TLSs are found to be free of pure dephasing at their energy degeneracy points, around which their Ramsey and spin-echo dephasing rates scale linearly and quadratically with asymmetry energy, respectively. We provide an explanation based on the standard tunneling model, and identify interaction with incoherent low-frequency (thermal) TLSs as the major mechanism of the pure dephasing in coherent high-frequency TLS.
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.
The tunneling of a particle between two states, as influenced by coupling the particle to an external field, is investigated. A spin-boson Hamiltonian is used to describe the tunnel system and its interaction with a medium and is augmented by a term coupling the dipole moment of the particle to the external field. A projection operator method is introduced that provides equations of motion for the particle's density matrix and permits discussion of external field effects on tunneling even at very low temperatures. These equations of motion can exhibit solutions characterized by population relaxation with a rate constant that is an average over the period of the external field. As an application of this theory, the modification by an external field of the tunneling rate of a defect in a metal, where the system-medium interaction is characterized by an Ohmic spectrum, is evaluated. At sufficiently low temperatures, for experimentally relevant parameter values, suitably chosen (constant and/or sinusoidal), external fields can greatly suppress or enhance the tunneling rate relative to the field-independent value. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.