Comparison of analytical and numerical methods and the effect of bath coupling on the quantum decoherence

Abstract

The dynamics of a qubit in a structured environment is investigated theoretically. One point of view of the model is the spin-boson model with a Lorentz shaped spectral density. An alternative view is a qubit coupled to harmonic oscillator (HO), which in turn coupled to a Ohmic environment. Two different methods are applied and compared for this problem. One is a perturbation method based on a unitary transformation. Since the transformed hamiltonian is of rotating wave approximation (RWA) form, we call it the transformed rotating wave approximation (TRWA) method. And the other one is the numerically exact method of the quasi-adiabatic propagator path-integral (QUAPI) method. TRWA method can be applied from the first point of view. And the QUAPI method can applied from both points of views. We find that from the 1st point of view QUAPI only works well for large $\Gamma$. Since the memory time is too long for the practical evaluation of QUAPI when $\Gamma$ is small. We call this treatment as QUAPI1. And from the 2nd point of view, QUAPI works well for small $\Gamma$, since the non-adiabatic effect become more important as $\Gamma$ increases, one need smaller time-step and more steps to obtain accurate result which also quickly runs out the computational resources. This treatment is called QUAPI2. We find that the TRWA method works well for the whole parameter range of $\Gamma$ and show good agreement with QUAPI1 and QUAPI2. On the other hand, we find that the decoherence of the qubit can be reduced with increasing coupling between HO and bath. This result may be relevant to the design of quantum computer.