Quantifying fermionic decoherence in many-body systems
Abstract
Practical measures of electronic decoherence, called distilled purities, that are applicable to many-body systems are introduced. While usual measures of electronic decoherence such as the purity employ the full -particle density matrix which is generally unavailable, the distilled purities are based on the -body reduced density matrices (-RDMs) which are more accessible quantities. The -body distilled purities are derivative quantities of the previously introduced -body reduced purities [I. Franco and H. Appel, J. Chem. Phys. 139, 094109 (2013)] that measure the non-idempotency of the -RDMs. Specifically, the distilled purities exploit the structure of the reduced purities to extract coherences between Slater determinants with integer occupations defined by a given single-particle basis that compose an electronic state. In this way, the distilled purities offer a practical platform to quantify coherences in a given basis that can be used to analyze the quantum dynamics of many-electron systems. Exact expressions for the one-body and two-body distilled purities are presented and the utility of the approach is exemplified via an analysis of the dynamics of oligo-acetylene as described by the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian. Last, the advantages and limitations of the purity, reduced purity and distilled purity as measures of electronic coherence are discussed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1706.01529,
title = {Quantifying fermionic decoherence in many-body systems},
author = {Arnab Kar and Ignacio Franco},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.01529},
year = {2017}
}