733 research outputs found
Decoherence and the Nature of System-Environment Correlations
We investigate system-environment correlations based on the exact dynamics of
a qubit and its environment in the framework of pure decoherence (phase
damping). We focus on the relation of decoherence and the build-up of
system-reservoir entanglement for an arbitrary (possibly mixed) initial qubit
state. In the commonly employed regime where the qubit dynamics can be
described by a Markov master equation of Lindblad type, we find that for almost
all qubit initial states inside the Bloch sphere, decoherence is complete while
the total state is still separable - no entanglement is involved. In general,
both "separable" and "entangling" decoherence occurs, depending on temperature
and initial qubit state. Moreover, we find situations where classical and
quantum correlations periodically alternate as a function of time in the regime
of low temperatures
Breakdown of a conservation law in incommensurate systems
We show that invariance properties of the Lagrangian of an incommensurate
system, as described by the Frenkel Kontorova model, imply the existence of a
generalized angular momentum which is an integral of motion if the system
remains floating. The behavior of this quantity can therefore monitor the
character of the system as floating (when it is conserved) or locked (when it
is not). We find that, during the dynamics, the non-linear couplings of our
model cause parametric phonon excitations which lead to the appearance of
Umklapp terms and to a sudden deviation of the generalized momentum from a
constant value, signalling a dynamical transition from a floating to a pinned
state. We point out that this transition is related but does not coincide with
the onset of sliding friction which can take place when the system is still
floating.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, typed with RevTex, submitted to Phys. Rev. E
Replaced 27-03-2001: changes to text, minor revision of figure
Spectral properties of molecular oligomers. A non-Markovian quantum state diffusion approach
Absorption spectra of small molecular aggregates (oligomers) are considered.
The dipole-dipole interaction between the monomers leads to shifts of the
oligomer spectra with respect to the monomer absorption. The line-shapes of
monomer as well as oligomer absorption depend strongly on the coupling to
vibrational modes. Using a recently developed approach [Roden et. al, PRL 103,
058301] we investigate the length dependence of spectra of one-dimensional
aggregates for various values of the interaction strength between the monomers.
It is demonstrated, that the present approach is well suited to describe the
occurrence of the J- and H-bands
System-environment correlations and Non-Markovian dynamics
We determine the total state dynamics of a dephasing open quantum system
using the standard environment of harmonic oscillators. Of particular interest
are random unitary approaches to the same reduced dynamics and
system-environment correlations in the full model. Concentrating on a model
with an at times negative dephasing rate, the issue of "non-Markovianity" will
also be addressed. Crucially, given the quantum environment, the appearance of
non-Markovian dynamics turns out to be accompanied by a loss of
system-environment correlations. Depending on the initial purity of the qubit
state, these system-environment correlations may be purely classical over the
whole relevant time scale, or there may be intervals of genuine
system-environment entanglement. In the latter case, we see no obvious relation
between the build-up or decay of these quantum correlations and
"Non-Markovianity"
A Bose gas in a single-beam optical dipole trap
We study an ultracold Bose gas in an optical dipole trap consisting of one
single focused laser beam. An analytical expression for the corresponding
density of states beyond the usual harmonic approximation is obtained. We are
thus able to discuss the existence of a critical temperature for Bose-Einstein
condensation and find that the phase transition must be enabled by a cutoff
near the threshold. Moreover, we study the dynamics of evaporative cooling and
observe significant deviations from the findings for the well-established
harmonic approximation. Furthermore, we investigate Bose-Einstein condensates
in such a trap in Thomas-Fermi approximation and determine analytical
expressions for chemical potential, internal energy and Thomas-Fermi radii
beyond the usual harmonic approximation
Electron spin tomography through counting statistics: a quantum trajectory approach
We investigate the dynamics of electron spin qubits in quantum dots.
Measurement of the qubit state is realized by a charge current through the dot.
The dynamics is described in the framework of the quantum trajectory approach,
widely used in quantum optics, and we show that it can be applied successfully
to problems in condensed matter physics. The relevant master equation dynamics
is unravelled to simulate stochastic tunneling events of the current through
the dot.Quantum trajectories are then used to extract the counting statistics
of the current. We show how, in combination with an electron spin resonance
(ESR) field, counting statistics can be employed for quantum state tomography
of the qubit state. Further, it is shown how decoherence and relaxation time
scales can be estimated with the help of counting statistics, in the time
domain. Finally, we discuss a setup for single shot measurement of the qubit
state without the need for spin-polarized leads.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, RevTeX4, submitted to PR
Quantum trajectories for Brownian motion
We present the stochastic Schroedinger equation for the dynamics of a quantum
particle coupled to a high temperature environment and apply it the dynamics of
a driven, damped, nonlinear quantum oscillator. Apart from an initial slip on
the environmental memory time scale, in the mean, our result recovers the
solution of the known non-Lindblad quantum Brownian motion master equation. A
remarkable feature of our approach is its localization property: individual
quantum trajectories remain localized wave packets for all times, even for the
classically chaotic system considered here, the localization being stronger the
smaller .Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figure
Decoherence and Entanglement Dynamics in Fluctuating Fields
We study pure phase damping of two qubits due to fluctuating fields. As
frequently employed, decoherence is thus described in terms of random unitary
(RU) dynamics, i.e., a convex mixture of unitary transformations. Based on a
separation of the dynamics into an average Hamiltonian and a noise channel, we
are able to analytically determine the evolution of both entanglement and
purity. This enables us to characterize the dynamics in a concurrence-purity
(CP) diagram: we find that RU phase damping dynamics sets constraints on
accessible regions in the CP plane. We show that initial state and dynamics
contribute to final entanglement independently.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, added minor changes in order to match published
versio
Exact c-number Representation of Non-Markovian Quantum Dissipation
The reduced dynamics of a quantum system interacting with a linear heat bath
finds an exact representation in terms of a stochastic Schr{\"o}dinger
equation. All memory effects of the reservoir are transformed into noise
correlations and mean-field friction. The classical limit of the resulting
stochastic dynamics is shown to be a generalized Langevin equation, and
conventional quantum state diffusion is recovered in the Born--Markov
approximation. The non-Markovian exact dynamics, valid at arbitrary temperature
and damping strength, is exemplified by an application to the dissipative
two-state system.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev. Let
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