• Medientyp: E-Artikel
  • Titel: Quantum dephasing of a two-state system by a nonequilibrium harmonic oscillator
  • Beteiligte: Martens, Craig C.
  • Erschienen: AIP Publishing, 2013
  • Erschienen in: The Journal of Chemical Physics, 139 (2013) 2
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • DOI: 10.1063/1.4811219
  • ISSN: 0021-9606; 1089-7690
  • Entstehung:
  • Anmerkungen:
  • Beschreibung: In this paper, we investigate coherent quantum dynamics in a nonequilibrium environment. We focus on a two-state quantum system strongly coupled to a single classical environmental oscillator, and explore the effect of nonstationary statistical properties of the oscillator on the quantum evolution. A simple nonequilibrium model, consisting of an oscillator with a well-defined initial phase which undergoes subsequent diffusion, is introduced and studied. Approximate but accurate analytic expressions for the evolution of the off-diagonal density matrix element of the quantum system are derived in the second-order cumulant approximation. The effect of the initial phase choice on the subsequent quantum evolution is quantified. It is observed that the initial phase can have a significant effect on the preservation of coherence on short time scales, suggesting this variable as a control parameter for optimizing coherence in many-body quantum systems.