Quantum Friction: Cooling Quantum Systems with Unitary Time Evolution
Abstract
We introduce a type of quantum dissipation -- local quantum friction -- by adding to the Hamiltonian a local potential that breaks time-reversal invariance so as to cool the system. Unlike the Kossakowski-Lindblad master equation, local quantum friction directly effects unitary evolution of the wavefunctions rather than the density matrix: it may thus be used to cool fermionic many-body systems with thousands of wavefunctions that must remain orthogonal. In addition to providing an efficient way to simulate quantum dissipation and non-equilibrium dynamics, local quantum friction coupled with adiabatic state preparation significantly speeds up many-body simulations, making the solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation significantly simpler than the solution of its stationary counterpart.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1305.6891,
title = {Quantum Friction: Cooling Quantum Systems with Unitary Time Evolution},
author = {Aurel Bulgac and Michael McNeil Forbes and Kenneth J. Roche and Gabriel Wlazłowski},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1305.6891},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
5 pages, 3 figures, and 1 movie: see http://www.phys.washington.edu/~bulgac/media_files/ufg_tdslda.mpeg