Shot Noise of Spin-Decohering Transport in Spin-Orbit Coupled Nanostructures

We generalize the scattering theory of quantum shot noise to include the full spin-density matrix of electrons injected from a spin-filtering or ferromagnetic electrode into a quantum-coherent nanostructure governed by various spin-dependent interactions. This formalism yields the spin-resolved shot noise power for different experimental measurement setups--with ferromagnetic source and ferromagnetic or normal drain electrodes--whose evaluation for the diffusive multichannel quantum wires with the Rashba (SO) spin-orbit coupling shows how spin decoherence and dephasing lead to substantial enhancement of charge current fluctuations (characterized by Fano factors $> 1/3$). However, these processes and the corresponding shot noise increase are suppressed in narrow wires, so that charge transport experiments measuring the Fano factor $F_{\uparrow \to \uparrow \downarrow}$ in a ferromagnet/SO-coupled-wire/paramagnet setup also quantify the degree of phase-coherence of transported spin--we predict a one-to-one correspondence between the magnitude of the spin polarization vector and $F_{\uparrow \to \uparrow \downarrow}$.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure; enhanced with 2 new figure

Classical and Quantum Fluctuation Theorems for Heat Exchange

The statistics of heat exchange between two classical or quantum finite systems initially prepared at different temperatures are shown to obey a fluctuation theorem.Comment: 4 pages, 1 included figure, to appear in Phys Rev Let

Moment distributiuons of clusters and molecules in the adiabatic rotor model

We present a Fortran program to compute the distribution of dipole moments of free particles for use in analyzing molecular beams experiments that measure moments by deflection in an inhomogeneous field. The theory is the same for magnetic and electric dipole moments, and is based on a thermal ensemble of classical particles that are free to rotate and that have moment vectors aligned along a principal axis of rotation. The theory has two parameters, the ratio of the magnetic (or electric) dipole energy to the thermal energy, and the ratio of moments of inertia of the rotor.Comment: 3 pages with 2 figure

Spin and charge pumping in magnetic tunnel junctions with precessing magnetization: A nonequilibrium Green function approach

We study spin and charge currents pumped by precessing magnetization of a single ferromagnetic layer within F|I|N or F|I|F (F-ferromagnet; I-insulator; N-normal-metal) multilayers of nanoscale thickness attached to two normal metal electrodes with no applied bias voltage between them. Both simple one-dimensional model, consisting of a single precessing spin and a potential barrier as the "sample," and realistic three-dimensional devices are investigated. In the rotating reference frame, where the magnetization appears to be static, these junctions are mapped onto a four-terminal dc circuit whose effectively half-metallic ferromagnetic electrodes are biased by the frequency $\hbar \omega/e$ of microwave radiation driving magnetization precession at the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) conditions. We show that pumped spin current in F|I|F junctions, diminished behind the tunnel barrier and increased in the opposite direction, is filtered into charge current by the second $F$ layer to generate dc pumping voltage of the order of $\sim 1$ $\mu$V (at FMR frequency $\sim 10$ GHz) in an open circuit. In F|I|N devices, several orders of magnitude smaller charge current and the corresponding dc voltage appear concomitantly with the pumped spin current due to barrier induced asymmetry in the transmission coefficients connecting the four electrodes in the rotating frame picture of pumping.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Quantum erasure within the Optical Stern-Gerlach Model

In the optical Stern-Gerlach effect the two branches in which the incoming atomic packet splits up can display interference pattern outside the cavity when a field measurement is made which erases the which-way information on the quantum paths the system can follow. On the contrary, the mere possibility to acquire this information causes a decoherence effect which cancels out the interference pattern. A phase space analysis is also carried out to investigate on the negativity of the Wigner function and on the connection between its covariance matrix and the distinguishability of the quantum paths.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

Unstable particles as open quantum systems

We present the probability preserving description of the decaying particle within the framework of quantum mechanics of open systems taking into account the superselection rule prohibiting the superposition of the particle and vacuum. In our approach the evolution of the system is given by a family of completely positive trace preserving maps forming one-parameter dynamical semigroup. We give the Kraus representation for the general evolution of such systems which allows one to write the evolution for systems with two or more particles. Moreover, we show that the decay of the particle can be regarded as a Markov process by finding explicitly the master equation in the Lindblad form. We also show that there are remarkable restrictions on the possible strength of decoherence.Comment: 11 pp, 2 figs (published version

Destruction of states in quantum mechanics

A description of destruction of states on the grounds of quantum mechanics rather than quantum field theory is proposed. Several kinds of maps called supertraces are defined and used to describe the destruction procedure. The introduced algorithm can be treated as a supplement to the von Neumann-Lueders measurement. The discussed formalism may be helpful in a description of EPR type experiments and in quantum information theory.Comment: 14 pp, 1 eps figure, LaTeX2e using iopart class. Final version, will be published in J. Phys. A: Math. Ge

Massive Parallel Quantum Computer Simulator

We describe portable software to simulate universal quantum computers on massive parallel computers. We illustrate the use of the simulation software by running various quantum algorithms on different computer architectures, such as a IBM BlueGene/L, a IBM Regatta p690+, a Hitachi SR11000/J1, a Cray X1E, a SGI Altix 3700 and clusters of PCs running Windows XP. We study the performance of the software by simulating quantum computers containing up to 36 qubits, using up to 4096 processors and up to 1 TB of memory. Our results demonstrate that the simulator exhibits nearly ideal scaling as a function of the number of processors and suggest that the simulation software described in this paper may also serve as benchmark for testing high-end parallel computers.Comment: To appear in Comp. Phys. Com

Entropy production and equilibration in Yang-Mills quantum mechanics

The Husimi distribution provides for a coarse grained representation of the phase space distribution of a quantum system, which may be used to track the growth of entropy of the system. We present a general and systematic method of solving the Husimi equation of motion for an isolated quantum system, and we construct a coarse grained Hamiltonian whose expectation value is exactly conserved. As an application, we numerically solve the Husimi equation of motion for two-dimensional Yang-Mills quantum mechanics (the x-y model) and calculate the time evolution of the coarse grained entropy of a highly excited state. We show that the coarse grained entropy saturates to a value that coincides with the microcanonical entropy corresponding to the energy of the system.Comment: 23 pages, 23 figure

Optimal Monitoring of Position in Nonlinear Quantum Systems

We discuss a model of repeated measurements of position in a quantum system which is monitored for a finite amount of time with a finite instrumental error. In this framework we recover the optimum monitoring of a harmonic oscillator proposed in the case of an instantaneous collapse of the wavefunction into an infinite-accuracy measurement result. We also establish numerically the existence of an optimal measurement strategy in the case of a nonlinear system. This optimal strategy is completely defined by the spectral properties of the nonlinear system.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX 3.0, 4 PostScript figure