Quantum systems are typically subject to various environmental noise sources. Treating these environmental disturbances with a system-bath approach beyond weak coupling one must refer to numerical methods as, for example, the numerically exact quasi-adiabatic path integral approach. This approach, however, cannot treat baths which couple to the system via operators, which do not commute. We extend the quasi-adiabatic path integral approach by determining the time discrete influence functional for such non-commuting fluctuations and by modifying the propagation scheme accordingly. We test the extended quasi-adiabatic path integral approach by determining the time evolution of a quantum two-level system coupled to two independent bath via non-commuting operators. We show that convergent results can be obtained and agreement with analytical weak coupling results is achieved in the respective limits.
We propose a rocking ratchet designed as a symmetric quantum two-state system driven by a single periodic harmonic force and influenced symmetrically by thermal fluctuations. We show that the necessary broken symmetry can dynamically be achieved by a thermal environment that couples to the energy difference between the two states and the tunnel coupling between them. The quantum two-state system is driven by the harmonic periodic drive through its avoided crossing. The correspondingly driven dissipative quantum dynamics results on average in a finite population difference between both states. This then causes directed particle transport.
Environmental noise leads to dephasing and relaxation in a quantum system. Often, a rigorous treatment of multiple noise sources within a system-bath approach is not possible. We discuss the influence of environmental fluctuations on a quantum system whose dynamics is dephasing already due to a phenomenologically treated additional noise source. For this situation, we develop a path integral approach, which allows to treat the system-environment coupling numerically exact, and additionally we extend standard perturbative approaches. We observe strong deviations between the numerical exact and the perturbative results even for weak system-bath coupling. This shows that standard perturbative approaches fail for additional, even weak, system-bath couplings if the system dynamics is already dissipative.
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