Loschmidt echo and stochastic-like quantum dynamics of nano-particles

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the quantum dynamics of nano-particles coupled to a dense vibrational reservoir, revealing three evolution regimes and the emergence of stochastic behavior due to coarse graining effects.

Contribution

It provides an analytical solution identifying three distinct dynamical regimes and critical coupling values, highlighting stochastic dynamics in overlapping recurrence cycles.

Findings

Identification of three evolution regimes: oscillations, Loschmidt echo, overlapping cycles

Critical coupling constants for regime transitions

Stochastic dynamics arising from coarse graining effects

Abstract

We investigate time evolution of prepared vibrational state (system) coupled to a reservoir with dense spectrum of its vibrational states. We assume that the reservoir has an equidistant spectrum, and the system - reservoir coupling matrix elements are independent of the reservoir states. The analytical solution manifests three regimes of the evolution for the system: (I) weakly damped oscillations; (II) multicomponent Loschmidt echo in recurrence cycles; (III) overlapping recurrence cycles. We find the characteristic critical values of the system - reservoir coupling constant for the transitions between these regimes. Stochastic dynamics occurs in the regime (III) due to inevoidably in any real system coarse graining of time or energy measurements, or initial condition uncertainty. Even though a specific toy model is investigated here, when properly interpreted it yields quite reasonable description for a variety of physically relevant phenomena.