Quantum Environments: Spin Baths, Oscillator Baths, and applications to Quantum Magnetism

The low-energy physics of systems coupled to their surroundings is understood by truncating to effective Hamiltonians; these tend to reduce to a few canonical forms, involving coupling to "baths" of oscillators or spins. The method for doing this is demonstrated using examples from magnetism, superconductivity, and measurement theory, as is the way one then solves for the low-energy dynamics. Finally, detailed application is given to the exciting recent Quantum relaxation and tunneling work in naomagnets.Comment: Chapter in "Tunneling in Complex Systems" (World Sci., edited T. Tomsovic); 97 pages. Published in June 199

Dynamics of a Pair of Interacting Spins Coupled to an Environmental Sea

We solve for the dynamics of a pair of spins, coupled to each other and also to an environmental sea of oscillators. The environment mediates an indirect interaction between the spins, causing both mutual coherence effects and dissipation. This model describes a wide variety of physical systems, ranging from 2 coupled microscopic systems (eg., magnetic impurities, bromophores, etc), to 2 coupled macroscopic quantum systems. We obtain analytic results for 3 regimes, viz., (i) The locked regime, where the 2 spins lock together; (ii) The correlated relaxation regime (mutually correlated incoherent relaxation); and (iii) The mutual coherence regime, with correlated damped oscillations. These results cover most of the parameter space of the system.Comment: 49 pages, To appear in Int J. Mod. Phys.