Quantum decay rate of a nonlinear dissipative system with fission-like potential nearT c

We use a thermodynamic scheme (imaginary free energy method) in terms of the path integral technique to study the quantum decay rates of a metastable state system coupled to a heat bath in the crossover temperature (T _c) region. In this region the transition between thermally activated decay and tunneling occurs. A nonlinear coupling form factor is used to overcome the divergent integral in the partition function nearT _c. The decay rate formula based on the steepest descent approximation has been improved. A method is developed to calculate the real and imaginary parts of the partition function which combines a random walk method with fast-Fourier transform Monte-Carlo evaluation. For a nonlinear dissipative system with a damping correlation kernel of exponential form, the accurate numerical calculations are presented. The effects of nonlinear and frequency-dependent damping on the rate are shown.     

Quantum Dissipative Threshold and Its Effect on Decay of Metastable State

The coupling between system and reservoir is considered to be linear in the coordinates of the bath but nonlinear in the system＇s coordinate. A dissipative threshold is observed at finite temperatures due to nonlinear dissipation. The quantum decay rate of a metastable state including higher-order expanded terms of the coupling form function is proposed, which can be strongly decreased at finite temperatures when the quantum dissipative threshold is added to the saddle point of the potential.     

Dissipative contributions of internal multiplicative noise: I. mechanical oscillator

Langevin equations for closed systems with multiplicative fluctuations must also include appropriate dissipative terms that ensure eventual equilibration of the system. We consider an oscillator coupled to a heat bath and show that a particular nonlinear coupling to a harmonic heat bath leads to a fluctuating frequency and to nonlinear dissipative terms. We also analyze the effects of the multiplicative fluctuations and of the corresponding nonlinear dissipation on the temporal evolution of the average oscillator energy. We find that the rate of equilibration of this system can be significantly different from that of an oscillator with only additive fluctuations and linear dissipation.     

A canonical formulation of dissipative mechanics using complex-valued hamiltonians

We show that a large class of dissipative systems can be brought to a canonical form by introducing complex co-ordinates in phase space and a complex-valued hamiltonian. A naive canonical quantization of these systems lead to non-hermitean hamiltonian operators. The excited states are unstable and decay to the ground state. We also compute the tunneling amplitude across a potential barrier by solving the dissipative version of the Schrödinger equation. We then generalize the formalism to cases where the configuration space is a curved Riemannian manifold.     

Thermal relaxation of systems with quadratic heat bath coupling: I. Classical systems

We consider the evolution of systems whose coupling to the heat bath is quadratic in the bath coordinates. Performing an explicit elimination of the bath variables we arrive at an equation of evolution for the system variables alone. In the weak coupling limit we show that the equation is of the generalized Langevin form, with fluctuations that are Gaussian and that obey a fluctuation-dissipation relation. If the system-bath coupling is linear in the system coordinates the resulting fluctuations are additive and the dissipation is linear. If the coupling is nonlinear in the system coordinates, the resulting fluctuations are multiplicative and the dissipation is nonlinear.     

The Decay of Unstable Noncommutative Solitons

 We study the classical decay of unstable scalar solitons in noncommutative field theory in 2+1 dimensions. This can, but does not have to, be viewed as a toy model for the decay of D-branes in string theory. In the limit that the noncommutativity parameter θ is infinite, the gradient term is absent, there are no propagating modes and the soliton does not decay at all. If θ is large, but finite, the rotationally symmetric decay channel can be described as a highly excited nonlinear oscillator weakly coupled to a continuum of linear modes. This system is closely akin to those studied in the context of discrete breathers. We here diagonalize the linear problem and compute the decay rate to first order using a version of Fermi's Golden Rule, leaving a more rigorous treatment for future work. Received: 16 January 2003 / Accepted: 21 March 2003 Published online: 7 May 2003 Communicated by H. Araki, D. Buchholz, and K. Fredenhagen     

Quantum decoherence reduction by increasing the thermal bath temperature

The well-known increase of the decoherence rate with the temperature, for a quantum system coupled to a linear thermal bath, no longer holds for a different bath dynamics. This is shown by means of a simple classical nonlinear bath, as well as a quantum spin-boson model. The anomalous effect is due to the temperature dependence of the bath spectral profile. In the case of the second model, a link with the quantum Zeno effect is provided. The decoherence reduction via the temperature increase can be relevant for the design of quantum computers.     

非线性耗散对亚稳态系统量子衰变速率的影响

发展了一种快速傅里叶变换路径积分方法，研究非线性耗散系统的量子衰变速率，得到了Bounce轨道的作用量S_B，即衰变速率的指数因子.在系统与环境存在非线性耦合f(x)=tanh［λ(x-x_b)］的情形下，发现其对衰变速率具有抑制作用.指数因子随温度T的关系不再满足S_B=a［1-b(T/T_c)²］法则；与通常的线性耗散情形相比，跨越温度T_c回升，即系统更早地进入穿透区域. 关键词： 量子衰变 非线性耦合 路径积分 快速傅里叶变换     

Nonlinear momentum relaxation of an impurity in a harmonic chain

A microscopic derivation of the generalized Langevin equation for arbitrary powers of the momentum of an impurity in a harmonic chain is presented. As a direct consequence of the Gaussian character of the conditional momentum distribution function, nonlinear momentum coupling effects are absent for this system and the Langevin equation takes on a particularly simple form. The kernels which characterize the decay of higher powers of the impurity momentum depend on the ratio of the masses of the impurity and bath particles, in contrast to the situation for the momentum Langevin equation for this system. The simplicity of the harmonic chain dynamics is exploited in order to investigate several features of the relaxation, such as the factorization approximation for time-dependent correlation functions and the decay of the kinetic energy autocorrelation function.     

Nonlinear quantum dynamical semigroups for many-body open systems

The notion of a nonlinear quantum dynamical semigroup is introduced, and the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the corresponding nonlinear evolution equations are studied in a more abstract framework. The construction of nonlinear quantum dynamical semigroups is carried out for two different mean-field models. First a mean-field coupling between a system of noninteracting subsystems and the bath is investigated. As examples, a nonlinear frictional Schrödinger equation and a model for a quantum Boltzmann equation are discussed. Second, a many-body system with mean-field interaction coupled to a bath is considered. Here, again, the form of the generator is derived; however, it cannot be obtained rigorously, except for some particular examples. Finally, the quantum Ising-Weiss model is briefly studied.     

A Non-Maxwellian Steady Distribution for One-Dimensional Granular Media

We consider a nonlinear Fokker–Planck equation for a one-dimensional granular medium. This is a kinetic approximation of a system of nearly elastic particles in a thermal bath. We prove that homogeneous solutions tend asymptotically in time toward a unique non-Maxwellian stationary distribution.     

Decay Process of Quantum Open System at Finite Temperatures

Starting from the formal solution to the Heisenberg equation, we revisit an universal model for a quantum open system with a harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a boson bath. The analysis of the decay process for a Fock state and a coherent state demonstrate that this method is very useful in dealing with the problems in decay process of the open system. For finite temperatures, the calculations of the reduced density matrix and the mean excitation number for the open system show that an initial coherent state will evolve into a temperature-dependant coherent state after tracing over the bath variables. Also in short-time limit, a temperature-dependant effective Hamiltonian for the open system characterizes the decay process of the open system.     

Decay Process of Quantum Open System at Finite Temperatures

Starting from the formal solution to the Heisenberg equation, we revisit an universal model for a quantum open system with a harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a boson bath. The analysis of the decay process for a Fock state and a coherent state demonstrate that this method is very useful in dealing with the problems in decay process of the open system. For finite temperatures, the calculations of the reduced density matrix and the mean excitation number for the open system show that an initial coherent state will evolve into a temperature-dependant coherent state after tracing over the bath variables. Also in short-time limit, a temperature-dependant effective Hamiltonian for the open system characterizes the decay process of the open system.     

Universal phase shift and nonexponential decay of driven single-spin oscillations

We study, both theoretically and experimentally, driven Rabi oscillations of a single electron spin coupled to a nuclear-spin bath. Because of the long correlation time of the bath, two unusual features are observed in the oscillations. The decay follows a power law, and the oscillations are shifted in phase by a universal value of approximately pi/4. These properties are well understood from a theoretical expression that we derive here in the static limit for the nuclear bath. This improved understanding of the coupled electron-nuclear system is important for future experiments using the electron spin as a qubit.     

Quantum oscillations without quantum coherence

We study numerically the damping of quantum oscillations and the dynamics of the density matrix in model many-spin systems decohered by a spin bath. We show that oscillations of some density matrix elements can persist with considerable amplitude long after other elements, along with the entropy, have come close to saturation, i.e., when the system has been decohered almost completely. The oscillations exhibit very slow decay, and may be observable in experiments.     

Spin bath decoherence of quantum entanglement

We study an analytically solvable model for decoherence of a two spin system embedded in a large spin environment. As a measure of entanglement, we evaluate the concurrence for the Bell states (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pairs). We find that while for two separate spin baths all four Bell states lose their coherence with the same time dependence, for a common spin bath, two of the states decay faster than the others. We explain this difference by the relative orientation of the individual spins in the pair. We also examine how the Bell inequality is violated in the coherent regime. Both for one bath and two bath cases, we find that while two of the Bell states always obey the inequality, the other two violate the inequality at early times.     

Investigation of some supersymmetric decay channels of theZ

We consider the decay of the intermediate vector bosonZ into two fermions and two Goldstone fermions in a model realizing supersymmetry in a nonlinear way. Since the Goldstone fermions are neutrino-like particles, the experimental signature would be two leptons or two jets together with missing energy. We show that for a scale of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking of the order 70 GeV the rate for this process should be detectable in LEP-experiments.     

Storage of Maximal Wigner-Yanase Skew Information of Two-Qubit System Using Nonlinear Interactions with Decay

The decay mechanism is considered in some nonlinear interaction models for two-qubit system. Exact expression of the final states of two-qubit are given for different model. We find that the maximal Wigner-Yanase skew information can be modulated and stored via using decay mechanism and nonlinear interaction. Due to the maximal Wigner-Yanase skew information being equivalent to the concurrence, the conditions of generating the maximally entangled state (i.e., the Bell state) are obtained.     

Thermostatistics of overdamped motion of interacting particles

We show through a nonlinear Fokker-Planck formalism, and confirm by molecular dynamics simulations, that the overdamped motion of interacting particles at T=0, where T is the temperature of a thermal bath connected to the system, can be directly associated with Tsallis thermostatistics. For sufficiently high values of T, the distribution of particles becomes Gaussian, so that the classical Boltzmann-Gibbs behavior is recovered. For intermediate temperatures of the thermal bath, the system displays a mixed behavior that follows a novel type of thermostatistics, where the entropy is given by a linear combination of Tsallis and Boltzmann-Gibbs entropies.     

Generation of macroscopic superpositions of quantum states by linear coupling to a bath

We demonstrate through an exactly solvable model that collective coupling to any thermal bath induces effectively nonlinear couplings in a quantum many-body (multispin) system. The resulting evolution can drive an uncorrelated large-spin system with high probability into a macroscopic quantum-superposition state. We discuss possible experimental realizations.