6 research outputs found
Parity Effects in Spin Decoherence
We demonstrate that decoherence of many-spin systems can drastically differ
from decoherence of single-spin systems. The difference originates at the most
basic level, being determined by parity of the central system, i.e. by whether
the system comprises even or odd number of spin-1/2 entities. Therefore, it is
very likely that similar distinction between the central spin systems of even
and odd parity is important in many other situations. Our consideration
clarifies the physical origin of the unusual two-step decoherence found
previously in the two-spin systems.Comment: RevTeX 4, 5 pages, 2 figures; acknowledgments added; replaced with
the published version; journal reference adde
Decoherence by a chaotic many-spin bath
We numerically investigate decoherence of a two-spin system (central system)
by a bath of many spins 1/2. By carefully adjusting parameters, the dynamical
regime of the bath has been varied from quantum chaos to regular, while all
other dynamical characteristics have been kept practically intact. We
explicitly demonstrate that for a many-body quantum bath, the onset of quantum
chaos leads to significantly faster and stronger decoherence compared to an
equivalent non-chaotic bath. Moreover, the non-diagonal elements of the
system's density matrix decay differently for chaotic and non-chaotic baths.
Therefore, knowledge of the basic parameters of the bath (strength of the
system-bath interaction, bath's spectral density of states) is not always
sufficient, and much finer details of the bath's dynamics can strongly affect
the decoherence process.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 5 eps figure
Electron spin dynamics in quantum dots and related nanostructures due to hyperfine interaction with nuclei
We review and summarize recent theoretical and experimental work on electron
spin dynamics in quantum dots and related nanostructures due to hyperfine
interaction with surrounding nuclear spins. This topic is of particular
interest with respect to several proposals for quantum information processing
in solid state systems. Specifically, we investigate the hyperfine interaction
of an electron spin confined in a quantum dot in an s-type conduction band with
the nuclear spins in the dot. This interaction is proportional to the square
modulus of the electron wave function at the location of each nucleus leading
to an inhomogeneous coupling, i.e. nuclei in different locations are coupled
with different strength. In the case of an initially fully polarized nuclear
spin system an exact analytical solution for the spin dynamics can be found.
For not completely polarized nuclei, approximation-free results can only be
obtained numerically in sufficiently small systems. We compare these exact
results with findings from several approximation strategies.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures. Topical Review to appear in J. Phys.: Condens.
Matte