English

Spin relaxation in a complex environment

Statistical Mechanics 2009-11-10 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

We report the study of a model of a two-level system interacting in a non-diagonal way with a complex environment described by Gaussian orthogonal random matrices (GORM). The effect of the interaction on the total spectrum and its consequences on the dynamics of the two-level system are analyzed. We show the existence of a critical value of the interaction, depending on the mean level spacing of the environment, above which the dynamics is self-averaging and closely obey a master equation for the time evolution of the observables of the two-level system. Analytic results are also obtained in the strong coupling regimes. We finally study the equilibrium values of the two-level system population and show under which condition it thermalizes to the environment temperature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0308140,
  title  = {Spin relaxation in a complex environment},
  author = {Massimiliano Esposito and Pierre Gaspard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0308140},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

45 pages, 49 figures