Competition between relaxation and external driving in the dissipative Landau-Zener problem

TL;DR

This paper investigates how dissipation and external driving compete during Landau-Zener transitions, revealing a nonmonotonic transition probability behavior through numerically exact simulations, highlighting complex dynamics beyond perturbative methods.

Contribution

It introduces a numerically exact approach to analyze dissipative Landau-Zener transitions, uncovering nontrivial nonmonotonic dependence on sweep velocity and elucidating the interplay of relaxation and external driving.

Findings

Transition probability shows nonmonotonic dependence on sweep velocity.

Relaxation and external driving compete, affecting transition outcomes.

Provides a qualitative understanding of the time scale competition.

Abstract

We study Landau-Zener transitions in a dissipative environment by means of the quasiadiabatic propagator path-integral scheme. It allows to obtain numerically exact results for the full range of the involved parameters. We discover a nonmonotonic dependence of the Landau-Zener transition probability on the sweep velocity which is explained in terms of a simple physical picture. This feature results from a nontrivial competition between relaxation processes and the external sweep and is not captured by perturbative approaches. In addition to the Landau-Zener transition probability, we study the excitation survival probability and also provide a qualitative understanding of the involved competition of time scales.