Suppression of non-adiabatic phases by a non-Markovian environment: easier observation of Berry phases

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a non-Markovian environment can suppress non-adiabatic effects, enabling easier observation of Berry phases in a two-level quantum system without significant decoherence.

Contribution

It shows that non-Markovian environments suppress non-adiabatic transitions, allowing robust observation of Berry phases without the need for decoherence-free subspaces.

Findings

Berry phases can be observed more easily than in traditional setups.

Non-Markovian environments suppress non-adiabatic transitions.

The effect is observable in qubit devices with controlled noise.

Abstract

We consider a two-level system coupled to a highly non-Markovian environment when the coupling axis rotates with time. The environment may be quantum (for example a bosonic bath or a spin bath) or classical (such as classical noise). We show that an Anderson orthogonality catastrophe suppresses transitions, so that the system's instantaneous eigenstates (parallel and anti-parallel to the coupling axis) can adiabatically follow the rotation. These states thereby acquire Berry phases; geometric phases given by the area enclosed by the coupling axis. Unlike in earlier proposals for environment-induced Berry phases, here there is little decoherence, so one does not need a decoherence-free subspace. Indeed we show that this Berry phase should be much easier to observe than a conventional one, because it is not masked by either the dynamic phase or the leading non-adiabatic phase. The effects that we discuss should be observable in any qubit device where one can drive three parameters in the Hamiltonian with strong man-made noise.