Real-time approach to tunnelling in open quantum systems: decoherence and anomalous diffusion

DOI10.1088/0305-4470/39/30/008MaRDI QIDQ5484455zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Esteban Calzetta, Enric Verdaguer

Publication date 17 August 2006

Published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0603047

zbMATH Keywords

eigenfunctionsanomalous diffusionWigner functionenergy representationWKB approximationsstrong decoherenceQuantum tunnelling

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Quantum computation (81P68) Phase-space methods including Wigner distributions, etc. applied to problems in quantum mechanics (81S30) Quantum dynamics and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics (general) (82C10) Transport processes in time-dependent statistical mechanics (82C70)

Abstract: Macroscopic quantum tunneling is described using the master equation for the reduced Wigner function of an open quantum system at zero temperature. Our model consists of a particle trapped in a cubic potential interacting with an environment characterized by dissipative and normal and anomalous diffusion coefficients. A representation based on the energy eigenfunctions of the isolated system, i.e. the system uncoupled to the environment, is used to write the reduced Wigner function, and the master equation becomes simpler in that representation. The energy eigenfunctions computed in a WKB approximation incorporate the tunneling effect of the isolated system and the effect of the environment is described by an equation that it is in many ways similar to a Fokker-Planck equation. Decoherence is easily identified from the master equation and we find that when the decoherence time is much shorter than the tunneling time the master equation can be approximated by a Kramers like equation describing thermal activation due to the zero point fluctuations of the quantum environment. The effect of anomalous diffusion can be dealt with perturbatively and its overall effect is to inhibit tunneling.

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