Using the numerical path integral method we investigate the decoherence and relaxation of qubits coupled to an Ohmic bath directly and via an intermediate harmonic oscillator (IHO). Here, we suppose the oscillation frequencies of the bath modes are higher than the IHO's. When we choose suitable parameters the qubits in the two models may have almost same decoherence and relaxation times. However, the decoherence and relaxation times of the qubit in the qubit-IHO-bath model can be modulated through changing the coupling coefficients of the qubit-IHO and IHO-bath and the oscillation frequency of the IHO.
In this paper we investigate the short-time decoherence from Ohmic and 1/f noise of single Josephson charge qubit (JCQ). At first, we use the short-time approximation to obtain the dynamics of the open JCQ. Then we calculate the decoherence the measure of which is chosen as the maximum norm of the deviation density operator. It is shown that the decoherence from 1/f noise plays the central role. The total decoherence from Ohmic and 1/f noise is serious at present experiential conditions according to the DiVincenzo criterion.
In this paper we study the decoherence and purity of a driven solid-state qubit in the Ohmic bath by using the method based on the master equation. At first, instead of solving the master equation we investigate the coefficients of the equation which describe the shift in frequency, diffusive, decoherence, and so on. It is shown that one of the coefficients (we called it decoherence coefficient) is crucial to the decoherence of the qubit in the model. Then we investigate the evolution of the purity of the state in the model. From the analysis of the purity we see that the decoherence time of t…
Using the numerical path integral method we investigate the decoherence and relaxation of qubits in spin-boson (SB) and spin-intermediate harmonic oscillator (IHO)-bath (SIB) models. The cases that the environment baths with low and medium frequencies are investigated. It is shown that the qubits in SB and SIB models have the same decoherence and relaxation as the baths with low frequencies. However, the qubits in the two models have different decoherence and relaxation as the baths with medium frequencies. The decoherence and relaxation of the qubit in SIB model can be modulated through chang…
In this paper, the dynamics of quantum Fisher information of a qubit interacting with a squeezed thermal environment are studied. The optimal initial state of the qubit, the temperature of the environment, and the interaction time, which maximize quantum Fisher information are obtained. Based on the ohmicity of the environment, we compare the dynamics of quantum Fisher information in ohmic, sub-ohmic, and super-ohmic regimes of the environment. Moreover, it is shown that the precise estimation of parameters is robust against squeezing.
We present a scheme to express a bath correlation function (BCF) corresponding to a given spectral density (SD) as a sum of damped harmonic oscillations. Such a representation is needed, for example, in many open quantum system approaches. To this end we introduce a class of fit functions that enables us to model ohmic as well as superohmic behavior. We show that these functions allow for an analytic calculation of the BCF using pole expansions of the temperature dependent hyperbolic cotangent. We demonstrate how to use these functions to fit spectral densities exemplarily for cases encountere…
The spin-boson model is studied by means of flow equations for Hamiltonians. Our truncation scheme includes all coupling terms which are linear in the bosonic operators. Starting with the canonical generator $η_c=[H_0,H]$ with $H_0$ resembling the non-interacting bosonic bath, the flow equations exhibit a universal attractor for the Hamiltonian flow. This allows to calculate equilibrium correlation functions for super-Ohmic, Ohmic and sub-Ohmic baths within a uniform framework including finite bias.
We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a spin-bath environment. It is shown that the connectivity and the coupling strength between the spins in the environment are of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. For the anisotropic spin-bath, changing the connectivity or coupling strenghts changes the decoherence of the central system from Gaussian to exponential decay law. The initial state of the environment is shown to affect the decoherence process in a qualitatively significant manner.
The decoherence of a two-state system coupled with a sub-Ohmic bath is investigated theoretically by means of the perturbation approach based on a unitary transformation. It is shown that the decoherence depends strongly and sensitively on the structure of environment. Nonadiabatic effect is treated through the introduction of a function $ξ_k$ which depends on the boson frequency and renormalized tunneling. The results are as follows:(1) the non-equilibrium correlation function $P(t)$, the dynamical susceptibility $χ''(ω)$ and the equilibrium correlation function $C(t)$ are analytically obtain…
We address a particular instance where open quantum systems may be used as quantum probes for an emergent property of a complex system, as the temperature of a thermal bath. The inherent fragility of the quantum probes against decoherence is the key feature making the overall scheme very sensitive. The specific setting examined here is that of quantum thermometry, which aims to exploits decoherence as resource to estimate the temperature of a sample. We focus on temperature estimation for a bosonic bath at equilibrium in the Ohmic regime (ranging from sub-Ohmic to super- Ohmic), by using pairs…
We show that the critical exponent of a quantum phase transition in a damped-driven open system is determined by the spectral density function of the reservoir. We consider the open-system variant of the Dicke model, where the driven boson mode and also the large N-spin couple to independent reservoirs at zero temperature. The critical exponent, which is $1$ if there is no spin-bath coupling, decreases below 1 when the spin couples to a sub-Ohmic reservoir.
The spin-boson model is analytically studied using displaced Fock states (DFS) without discretization of the continuum bath. In the orthogonal displaced Fock basis, the ground-state wavefunction can be systematically improved in a controllable way. Interestingly, the zeroth-order DFS reproduces exactly the well known Silbey-Harris results. In the framework of the second-order DFS, the magnetization and the entanglement entropy are exactly calculated. It is found that the magnetic critical exponent $β$ is converged to $0.5$ in the whole sub-Ohmic bath regime $0<s<1$, compared with that by the e…
We show theoretically how the periodic coupling between an engineered reservoir and a quantum Brownian particle leads to the formation of a dynamical steady state which is characterized by an effective temperature above the temperature of the environment. The average steady state energy of the system has a higher value than expected from the environmental properties. The system experiences repeatedly a non-Markovian behavior -- as a consequence the corresponding effective decay for long evolution times is always on average stronger than the Markovian one. We also highlight the consequences of …
An approach based on a non-Markovian time-convolutionless polaron master equation is used to probe the quantum dynamics of a chromophore-qubit in a super-Ohmic bath. Utilizing a measure of non-Markovianity based on dynamical fixed points, we study the effects of the environment temperature and the coupling strength on the non-Markovian behavior of the chromophore in a super-Ohmic bath. It is found that an increase in the temperature results in a reduction in the backflow information from the environment to the chromophore, and therefore, a suppression of non-Markovianity. In the weak coupling …
The well-known increase of the decoherence rate with the temperature, for a quantum system coupled to a linear thermal bath, holds no longer for a different bath dynamics. This is shown by means of a simple classical non-linear bath, as well as a quantum spin-boson model. The anomalous effect is due to the temperature dependence of the bath spectral profile. The decoherence reduction via the temperature increase can be relevant for the design of quantum computers.
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 ba…
By employing the spin-boson model in a dense limit of environmental modes, quantum entanglement and correlation of sub-Ohmic and Ohmic baths for dissipative quantum phase transitions are numerically investigated based on the variational principle. With several measures borrowed from quantum information theory, three different types of singularities are found for the first-order, second-order, and Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transitions, respectively, and the values of transition points and critical exponents are accurately determined. Besides, the scaling form of the quantum discord in the Ohmic…
The works on decoherence due to spin baths usually agree in studying a one-spin system in interaction with a large spin bath. In this paper we generalize those models by analyzing a many-spin system and by studying decoherence or its suppression in function of the relation between the numbers of spins of the system and the bath. This model may help to identify clusters of particles unaffected by decoherence, which, as a consequence, can be used to store quantum information.
We demonstrate in a very general fashion, considerable slowing down of decoherence and relaxation by fast frequency modulation of the system heat bath coupling. The slowing occurs as the decoherence rates are now determined by the spectral components of bath correlations which are shifted due to fast modulation. We present several examples including the slowing down of the heating of a trapped ion, where the system - bath interaction is not necessarily Markovian.
A low temperature model system consisting of a central spin coupled to a spin-bath is studied to determine whether interaction among bath spins has an effect on central spin dynamics. In the absence of intra-environmental coupling, decoherence of the central spin is fast and irreversible. Strong intra-environmental interaction results in an effective decoupling of the central spin from the bath and suppression of decoherence. Weaker intra-environmental coupling reduces but does not eliminate decoherence. We believe that similar behaviour will be observed in any system with a self-interacting e…
We consider an $S=1/2$ antiferromagnetic quantum Heisenberg chain where each site is coupled to an independent bosonic bath with ohmic dissipation. The coupling to the bath preserves the global SO(3) spin symmetry. Using large-scale, approximation-free quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that any finite coupling to the bath suffices to stabilize long-range antiferromagnetic order. This is in stark contrast to the isolated Heisenberg chain where spontaneous breaking of the SO(3) symmetry is forbidden by the Mermin-Wagner theorem. A linear spin-wave theory analysis confirms that the memory …
We propose a strategy to suppress decoherence of a solid-state qubit coupled to non-Markovian noises by attaching the qubit to a chaotic setup with the broad power distribution in particular in the high-frequency domain. Different from the existing decoherence control methods such as the usual dynamics decoupling control, high-frequency components of our control are generated by the chaotic setup driven by a low-frequency field, and the generation of complex optimized control pulses is not necessary. We apply the scheme to superconducting quantum circuits and find that various noises in a wide…
We study the decoherence of two coupled spins that interact with a spin-bath environment. It is shown that the connectivity and the coupling strength between the spins in the environment are of crucial importance for the decoherence of the central system. Changing the connectivity or coupling strenghts changes the decoherence of the central system from Gaussian to exponential decay law.
We study the relation between the sudden death and revival of the entanglement of two qubits in a common squeezed reservoir, and the normal decoherence, by getting closer to the Decoherence Free Subspace and calculating the effect on the death and revival times.
The evolution of a quantum system towards thermal equilibrium is usually studied by approximate methods, which have their limits of validity and should be checked against analytically solvable models. In this paper, we propose an analytically solvable model to investigate the energy transfer between a bosonic bath and a fermionic chain which are nonlinearly-coupled to each other. The bosonic bath consists of an infinite collection of non-interacting bosonic modes, while the fermionic chain is represented by a chain of interacting fermions with nearest-neighbor interactions. We compare behavior…
The Dirac-Frenkel time-dependent variation is employed to probe the dynamics of the zero temperature sub-Ohmic spin-boson model with strong friction utilizing the Davydov D1 ansatz. It is shown that initial conditions of the phonon bath have considerable influence on the dynamics. Counterintuitively, even in the very strong coupling regime, quantum coherence features still manage to survive under the polarized bath initial condition, while such features are absent under the factorized bath initial condition. In addition, a coherent-incoherent transition is found at a critical coupling strength…
We report an anomalous decoherence phenomenon of a quantum dissipative system in the framework of a stochastic decoupling scheme along with a hierarchical equations-of-motion formalism without the usual Born-Markov or weak coupling approximations. It is found that the decoherence of a two-qubit spin-boson model can be reduced by increasing the bath temperature in strong-coupling regimes. For the weak-coupling situation, we find that the bath temperature may enhance the decoherence. This result is contrary to the common recognition that a higher bath temperature always induces a more severe dec…
We show that the influence of the shared phonon bath considered in H. Hossein-Nejad and G. D. Scholes, New J. Phys. 12, 065045 (2010) on the exciton transfer in a two-molecule system can be reproduced by that of an independent bath model.
In this paper we propose a closed-system perspective to study decoherence. From this perspective we analyze the spin-bath model as presented in the literature, and a natural generalization of that model. On the basis of the results obtained from that analysis, we argue that decoherence may be understood as a phenomenon relative to the partition of a closed system, selected in each particular case. This viewpoint frees the decoherence program from certain conceptual difficulties derived from its open-system perspective. We also argue that the usual picture of decoherence in terms of energy diss…
The quantum average energy decay and the purity decay are studied for a system particle as a function of the number of constituents of a discrete bath model. The system particle is subjected to two distinct physical situations: the harmonic oscillator (HO) and the Morse potential. The environment (bath) is composed by a {\it finite} number N of uncoupled HOs, characterizing the structured bath, which in the limit $N\to\infty$ is assumed to have an ohmic, sub-ohmic or super-ohmic spectral density. For very low values of N the mean energy and purity remain constant in time but starts to decay fo…
We examine the influence of environmental interactions on simple quantum systems by obtaining the exact reduced dynamics of a qubit coupled to a one-dimensional spin bath. In contrast to previous studies, both the qubit-bath coupling and the nearest neighbor intrabath couplings are taken as the spin-flip XX-type. We first study the Rabi oscillations of a single qubit with the spin bath prepared in a spin coherent state, finding that nonresonance and finite intrabath interactions have significant effects on the qubit dynamics. Next, we discuss the bath-induced decoherence of the qubit when the …
The monogamous nature of entanglement has been illustrated by the derivation of entanglement sharing inequalities - bounds on the amount of entanglement that can be shared amongst the various parts of a multipartite system. Motivated by recent studies of decoherence, we demonstrate an interesting manifestation of this phenomena that arises in system-environment models where there exists interactions between the modes or subsystems of the environment. We investigate this phenomena in the spin-bath environment, constructing an entanglement sharing inequality bounding the entanglement between a c…
We address the discrimination of structured baths at different temperatures by dephasing quantum probes. We derive the exact reduced dynamics and evaluate the minimum error probability achievable by three different kinds of quantum probes, namely a qubit, a qutrit and a quantum register made of two qubits. Our results indicate that dephasing quantum probes are useful in discriminating low values of temperature, and that lower probabilities of error are achieved for intermediate values of the interaction time. A qutrit probe outperforms a qubit one in the discrimination task, whereas a register…
We study the quantum dynamics of a single qubit coupled to a bath of interacting spins as a model for decoherence in solid state quantum memories. The spin bath is described by the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model and the bath spins are subjected to a transverse magnetic field. We investigate the qubit interacting via either an Ising- or an XY-type coupling term to subsets of bath spins of differing size. The large degree of symmetry of the bath allows us to find parameter regimes where the initial qubit state is revived at well defined times after the qubit preparation. These times may become indep…
We study how to control the dynamics of tripartite entanglement among optical cavities using non-Markovian baths. In particular, we demonstrate how the reservoir engineering through the utilization of non-Markovian baths with different types of Lorentzian and ohmic spectral densities can lead to an entanglement survival for longer times and in some cases considerable regain of seemingly lost entanglement. Both of these behaviors indicate a better sustainability of entanglement (in time) compared to the usual Markovian bath situations which assumes a flat spectrum of the bath around the system …
The dynamics of two coupled spins-1/2 coupled to a spin-bath is studied as an extended model of the Tessieri-Wilkie Hamiltonian \cite{TWmodel}. The pair of spins served as an open subsystem were prepared in one of the Bell states and the bath consisted of some spins-1/2 is in a thermal equilibrium state from the very beginning. It is found that with the increasing the coupling strength of the bath spins, the bath forms a resonant antiferromagnetic order. The polarization correlation between the two spins of the subsystem and the concurrence are recovered in some extent to the isolated subsyste…
The longitudinal coupling of a system to the bath usually induces the pure dephasing of the system. In this paper, we study the collective dephasing induced dissipation and decoherence in a coupled-qubit system with a common bath. It is shown that, compared with the case of the same system with independent baths, the interference between the dephasing processes of different qubits induced by the common bath significantly changes the dissipation of the system. For the system of two coupled qubits, the interference leads to a faster decoherence in the non-single-excitation subspaces and a slower…
We investigate a spin-boson model with two boson baths that are coupled to two perpendicular components of the spin by employing the density matrix renormalization group method with an optimized boson basis. It is revealed that in the deep sub-Ohmic regime there exists a novel second-order phase transition between two types of doubly degenerate states, which is reduced to one of the usual type for nonzero tunneling. In addition, it is found that expectation values of the spin components display jumps at the phase boundary in the absence of bias and tunneling.
We investigate the decoherence patterns of topological qubits in contact with the environment by a novel way of deriving the open system dynamics other than the Feynman-Vernon. Each topological qubit is made of two Majorana modes of a 1D Kitaev's chain. These two Majorana modes interact with the environment in an incoherent way which yields peculiar decoherence patterns of the topological qubit. More specifically, we consider the open system dynamics of the topological qubits which are weakly coupled to the fermionic/bosonic Ohmic-like environments. We find atypical patterns of quantum decoher…
We demonstrate that the Chebyshev expansion method is a very efficient numerical tool for studying spin-bath decoherence of quantum systems. We consider two typical problems arising in studying decoherence of quantum systems consisting of few coupled spins: (i) determining the pointer states of the system, and (ii) determining the temporal decay of quantum oscillations. As our results demonstrate, for determining the pointer states, the Chebyshev-based scheme is at least a factor of 8 faster than existing algorithms based on the Suzuki-Trotter decomposition. For the problems of second type, th…
We consider a free charged particle interacting with an electromagnetic bath at zero temperature. The dipole approximation is used to treat the bath wavelengths larger than the width of the particle wave packet. The effect of these wavelengths is described then by a linear Hamiltonian whose form is analogous to phenomenological Hamiltonians previously adopted to describe the free particle-bath interaction. We study how the time dependence of decoherence evolution is related with initial particle-bath correlations. We show that decoherence is related to the time dependent dressing of the partic…
In this work we find explicitly the decoherence free subspace (DFS) for a two two-level system in a common squeezed vacuum bath. We also find an orthogonal basis for the DFS composed of a symmetrical and an antisymmetrical (under particle permutation) entangled state. For any initial symmetrical state, the master equation has one stationary state which is the symmetrical entangled decoherence free state. In this way, one can generate entanglement via common squeezed bath of the two systems. If the initial state does not have a definite parity, the stationary state depends strongly on the initi…
We study, in the paradigm of open quantum systems, the dynamics of quantum coherence of a static polarizable two-level atom which is coupled with a thermal bath of fluctuating electromagnetic field in the absence and presence of boundaries. The purpose is to find the conditions under which the decoherence can be inhibited effectively. We find that without boundaries, quantum coherence of the two-level atom inevitably decreases due to the effect of thermal bath. However, the quantum decoherence, in the presence of a boundary, could be effectively inhibited when the atom is transversely polariza…
The dynamics of a qubit in two different environments are investigated theoretically. The first environment is a two level system coupled to a bosonic bath. And the second one is a damped harmonic oscillator. Based on a unitary transformation, we find that the decoherence of the qubit can be reduced with increasing temperature $T$ in the first case, which agree with the results in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 120401], whereas, it can not be reduced with $T$ in the second case. In both cases, the qubit dynamics are changed substantially as the coupling increases or finite detuning appears.
Developed originally for the Holstein polaron, the Davydov D1 ansatz is an efficient, yet extremely accurate trial state for time-dependent variation of the spin-boson model [J. Chem. Phys. 138, 084111 (2013)]. In this work, the Dirac-Frenkel time-dependent variational procedure utilizing the Davydov D1 ansatz is implemented to study entanglement dynamics of two qubits under the influence of two independent baths. The Ohmic spectral density is used without the Born-Markov approximation or the rotating-wave approximation. In the strong coupling regime finite-time disentanglement is always found…
Maintaining coherence of a qubit is of vital importance for realizing a large-scale quantum computer in practice. In this work, we study the central spin decoherence problem in the $XXX$ central spin model (CSM) and focus on the quantum states with different initial entanglement, namely intra-bath entanglement or system-bath entanglement. We analytically obtain their evolutions of fidelity, entanglement, and quantum coherence. When the initial bath spins constitute an $N$-particle entangled state (the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-bath or the $W$-bath), the leading amplitudes of their fidelity e…
We study the dynamics of a quantum two state system driven through an avoided crossing under the influence of a super Ohmic environment, i.e. a longitudinal as well as a transversal one. The crossing time window, in which relaxation influences the dynamics, is centered around the avoided crossing. We determine the dynamics and the Landau-Zener probability employing the numerical exact quasi-adiabatic path integral. At weak coupling we show that the numerically less demanding nonequilibrium Bloch equations provide an accurate description. The crossing time depends strongly not only on the syste…
Coherence in an open quantum system is degraded through its interaction with a bath. This decoherence can be avoided by restricting the dynamics of the system to special decoherence-free subspaces. These subspaces are usually constructed under the assumption of spatially symmetric system-bath coupling. Here we show that decoherence-free subspaces may appear without spatial symmetry. Instead, we consider a model of system-bath interactions in which to first order only multiple-qubit coupling to the bath is present, with single-qubit system-bath coupling absent. We derive necessary and sufficien…
The time evolution of a spin-1/2 particle under the influence of a locally applied external magnetic field, and interacting with anisotropic spin environment in thermal equilibrium at temperature $T$ is studied. The exact analytical form of the reduced density matrix of the central spin is calculated explicitly for finite number of bath spins. The case of an infinite number of environmental spins is investigated using the convergence of the rescaled bath operators to normal Gaussian random variables. In this limit, we derive the analytical form of the components of the Bloch vector for antifer…
A general theory is presented for the treatment of decoherence of a multilevel quantum system (with many degrees of freedom) interacting with multi-bath reservoir and driven by ac fields. In this approach, the system is described by a reduced density operator and the multi-bath reservoir is characterized by a number of spectral densities. The reduced density operator is governed by the master equation in which the effect of ac driving fields and the leakage to non-computational states are included. The theory is applied to the study of decoherence of a two-dimensional (2D) SQUID flux qubit cou…
We investigate the effect of common bath decoherence on the qubits of Alice in the usual teleportation protocol. The system bath interaction is studied under the central spin model, where the qubits are coupled to the bath spins through isotropic Heisenberg interaction. We have given a more generalized representation of the protocol in terms of density matrices and calculated the average fidelity of the teleported state for different Bell state measurements performed by Alice. The common bath interaction differentiates the outcome of various Bell state measurements made by Alice. There will be…
The "self-induced decoherence" (SID) approach suggests that (1) the expectation value of any observable becomes diagonal in the eigenstates of the total Hamiltonian for systems endowed with a continuous energy spectrum, and (2), that this process can be interpreted as decoherence. We evaluate the first claim in the context of a simple spin bath model. We find that even for large environments, corresponding to an approximately continuous energy spectrum, diagonalization of the expectation value of random observables does in general not occur. We explain this result and conjecture that SID is li…
By means of a trial wave function, the multi-D$_1$ ansatz, extensive variational calculations with more than ten thousand parameters have been carried out to study quantum phase transitions in the ground states of a two-impurity system embedded in a common Ohmic bath of bosons. Quantum criticality in both the impurity system and the Ohmic bosonic bath is investigated with relevant transition points and critical exponents determined accurately. With the linear grid of the Ohmic spectral density, our numerical calculations produce a much better description of the ground states with lower energie…
We have studied the effect of a non-Hermitian Bosonic bath on the dynamics of a two-level spin system. The non-Hermitian Hamiltonian of the bath is chosen such that it converges to the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian when the non-Hermiticity is switched off. We calculate the dynamics of the spin system and found that the non-Hermiticity can have positive as well as negative effects on the coherence of the system. However, the decoherence can be completely eliminated by choosing the non-Hermiticity parameter and the phase of the system bath interaction appropriately. We have also studied the ef…
Quantum probing consists of suitably exploiting a simple, small, and controllable quantum system to characterize a larger and more complex system. Here, we address the estimation of the cutoff frequency of the Ohmic spectral density of a harmonic reservoir by quantum probes. To this aim, we address the use of single-qubit and two-qubit systems and different kinds of coupling with the bath of oscillators. We assess the estimation precision by the quantum Fisher information of the sole quantum probe as well as the corresponding quantum signal-to-noise ratio. We prove that, for most of the values…
A relationship between the time scales of quantum coherence loss and short-time solvent response for a solute/bath system is derived for a Gaussian wave packet approximation for the bath. Decoherence and solvent response times are shown to be directly proportional to each other, with the proportionality coefficient given by the ratio of the thermal energy fluctuations to the fluctuations in the system-bath coupling. The relationship allows the prediction of decoherence times for condensed phase chemical systems from well developed experimental methods.
