Dynamical Behavior of the Dissipative TwoState System.pdf

Dynamical Behavior of the Dissipative Two-State System Klaus V¨olker Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (February 1, 2008) We investigate the dynamical correlation function of a quantum-mechanical two-state system which is coupled to a bosonic heat bath, utilizing the equivalence between the spin-boson Hamiltonian and the 1/r2 Ising model. The imaginary-time correlation function is obtained from Monte Carlo simulations on the Ising system and then continued to real time by a Pad´e approximation. In the unbiased system, the transition from oscillatory to strongly damped behavior is found to occur at a coupling strength close to α = 1/2. The biased system favors coherent relaxation and displays a significantly larger crossover value α . We introduce the quasiparticle picture to describe the relevant c behavior at intermediate time scales. Within this approximation, we map out phase diagrams for 8 the unbiased and biased systems. 9 9 Phys. Rev. B 58, 1862 (1998); PACS numbers: 72.15.Qm 71.27.+a 75.20.Hr 1 l u J 4 9 I. INTRODUCTION some time. In this model, a set of harmonic oscillators 1 are coupled linearly to σz . The full Hamiltonian is