Adiabatic quantum decoherence in many non-interacting subsystems induced by the coupling with a common boson bath

TL;DR

This paper presents an exactly solvable model for quantum decoherence in many-body spin systems coupled to a common boson bath, revealing collective effects and applying to NMR experiments.

Contribution

It generalizes the spin-boson model to many non-interacting subsystems with a common environment, deriving an analytical decoherence function without coarse-graining.

Findings

Decoherence function is eigen-selective and complex exponential.

Imaginary part depends on quantum numbers and geometry, not temperature.

Model explains irreversibility in NMR 'magic echo' experiments.

Abstract

This work addresses quantum adiabatic decoherence of many-body spin systems coupled with a boson field in the framework of open quantum systems theory. We generalize the traditional spin-boson model by considering a system-environment interaction Hamiltonian that represents a partition of non-interacting subsystems and highlights the collective correlation that appears exclusively due to the coupling with a common environment. Remarkably, this simple, exactly solvable model encompasses relevant aspects of a many-body open quantum system and features the subtle quantum effects that arise when the size scales up to a macroscopic level. We derive an analytical expression for the time dependence of the density matrix without assuming coarse-graining. The resulting decoherence function is eigen-selective and is a complex exponential whose exponent has a real part that introduces a decay similar to that in the spin-boson model. On the contrary, the imaginary part depends on the quantum numbers and geometry of the whole partition and does not reflect the system temperature. Motivated by decoherence in solid-state NMR we apply the theoretical results to a partition of dipole-coupled spin pairs in contact with a common phonon bath, using typical parameters of hydrated salts. The proposal allows estimating the decoherence time scale in terms of the system physical constants. As a significant novelty, the decoherence function phase depends on the eigenvalue distribution throughout the sample. It plays the leading role, overshadowing the mechanism associated with the bath thermal state. Finally, we apply the formalism to describe decoherence in the "magic echo" NMR reversal experiment. We find that the system-environment correlation explains the origin of irreversibility, and both the decoherence rate value and its dependence on the dipolar frequency, are remarkably similar to the experiment.