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B. N. Harmon

Publications and source records attributed to B. N. Harmon.

54 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Quantum phases in a doped Mott insulator on the Shastry-Sutherland lattice

We propose the projected BCS wave function as the ground state for the doped Mott insulator SrCu2(BO3)2 on the Shastry-Sutherland lattice. At half filling this wave function yields the exact ground state. Adding mobile charge carriers, we find a strong asymmetry between electron and hole doping. Upon electron doping an unusual metal with strong valence bond correlations forms. Hole doped systems are d-wave RVB superconductors in which superconductivity is strongly enhanced by the emergence of inhomogeneous plaquette bond order.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Dynamical control of electron spin coherence in a quantum dot

We investigate the performance of dynamical decoupling methods at suppressing electron spin decoherence from a low-temperature nuclear spin reservoir in a quantum dot. The controlled dynamics is studied through exact numerical simulation, with emphasis on realistic pulse delays and long-time limit. Our results show that optimal performance for this system is attained by a periodic protocol exploiting concatenated design, with control rates substantially slower than expected from the upper spectral cutoff of the bath. For a known initial electron spin state, coherence can saturate at long times, signaling the creation of a stable ``spin-locked'' decoherence-free subspace. Analytical insight on saturation is obtained for a simple echo protocol, in good agreement with numerical results.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Hyperfine interaction induced decoherence of electron spins in quantum dots

We investigate in detail, using both analytical and numerical tools, the decoherence of electron spins in quantum dots (QDs) coupled to a bath of nuclear spins in magnetic fields or with various initial bath polarizations, focusing on the longitudinal relaxation in low and moderate field/polarization regimes. An increase of the initial polarization of nuclear spin bath has the same effect on the decoherence process as an increase of the external magnetic field, namely, the decoherence dynamics changes from smooth decay to damped oscillations. This change can be observed experimentally for a single QD and for a double-QD setup. Our results indicate that substantial increase of the decoherence time requires very large bath polarizations, and the use of other methods (dynamical decoupling or control of the nuclear spins distribution) may be more practical for suppressing decoherence of QD-based qubits.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Numerical modeling of the central spin problem using the spin coherent states P-representation

In this work, we consider decoherence of a central spin by a spin bath. In order to study the non-perturbative decoherence regimes, we develop an efficient mean-field-based method for modeling the spin-bath decoherence, based on the P-representation of the central spin density matrix. The method can be applied to longitudinal and transversal relaxation at different external fields. In particular, by modeling large-size quantum systems (up to 16000 bath spins), we make controlled predictions for the slow long-time decoherence of the central spin.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Parity Effects in Spin Decoherence

We demonstrate that decoherence of many-spin systems can drastically differ from decoherence of single-spin systems. The difference originates at the most basic level, being determined by parity of the central system, i.e. by whether the system comprises even or odd number of spin-1/2 entities. Therefore, it is very likely that similar distinction between the central spin systems of even and odd parity is important in many other situations. Our consideration clarifies the physical origin of the unusual two-step decoherence found previously in the two-spin systems.

quant-ph↗

Decoherence by a chaotic many-spin bath

We numerically investigate decoherence of a two-spin system (central system) by a bath of many spins 1/2. By carefully adjusting parameters, the dynamical regime of the bath has been varied from quantum chaos to regular, while all other dynamical characteristics have been kept practically intact. We explicitly demonstrate that for a many-body quantum bath, the onset of quantum chaos leads to significantly faster and stronger decoherence compared to an equivalent non-chaotic bath. Moreover, the non-diagonal elements of the system's density matrix decay differently for chaotic and non-chaotic baths. Therefore, knowledge of the basic parameters of the bath (strength of the system-bath interaction, bath's spectral density of states) is not always sufficient, and much finer details of the bath's dynamics can strongly affect the decoherence process.

quant-ph↗

Destruction of the Kondo effect by a local measurement

We show that the local spin measurement which decoheres the localized spin in a Kondo system, suppresses the Abrikosov-Suhl resonance and destroys the Kondo effect. This happens due to elimination of the entanglement between the localized spin and the conduction electrons, and differs essentially from smearing of the resonance by dissipation. Considering decoherence by a spin bath, we predict that the Kondo effect disappears when the Kondo temperature becomes smaller than the coupling with a bath. This effect can be detected in experiments on ``quantum corrals'' or quantum dots doped by impurities with internal degrees of freedom.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Many-spin effects and tunneling splittings in Mn12 magnetic molecules

We calculate the tunneling splittings in a Mn$_{12}$ magnetic molecule taking into account its internal many-spin structure. We discuss the precision and reliability of these calculations and show that restricting the basis (limiting the number of excitations taken into account) may lead to significant error (orders of magnitude) in the resulting tunneling splittings for the lowest energy levels, so that an intuitive picture of different decoupled energy scales does not hold in this case. Possible routes for further development of the many-spin model of Mn$_{12}$ are discussed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Quantum oscillations without quantum coherence

We study numerically the damping of quantum oscillations and the increase of entropy with time in model spin systems decohered by a spin bath. In some experimentally relevant cases, the oscillations of considerable amplitude can persist long after the entropy has saturated near its maximum, i.e. when the system has been decohered almost completely. Therefore, the pointer states of the system demonstrate non-trivial dynamics. The oscillations exhibit slow power-law decay, rather than exponential or Gaussian, and may be observable in experiments.

quant-ph↗

Length scales coupling for nonlinear dynamical problems in magnetism

The dynamics of real magnets is often governed by several interacting processes taking place simultaneously at different length scales. For dynamical simulations the relevant length scales should be coupled, and the energy transfer accurately described. We show that in this case the micromagnetic theory is not always reliable. We present a coarse-graining approach applicable to nonlinear problems, which provides a unified description of all relevant length scales, allowing a smooth, seamless coupling. The simulations performed on model systems show that the coarse-graining approach achieves nearly the precision of all-atom simulations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Effect of local Coulomb interactions on the electronic structure and exchange interactions in Mn12 magnetic molecules

We have studied the effect of local Coulomb interactions on the electronic structure of the molecular magnet Mn12-acetate within the LDA+U approach. The account of the on-site repulsion results in a finite energy gap and an integer value of the molecule's magnetic moment, both quantities being in a good agreement with the experimental results. The resulting magnetic moments and charge states of non-equivalent manganese ions agree very well with experiments. The calculated values of the intramolecular exchange parameters depend on the molecule's spin configuration, differing by 25-30% between the ferrimagnetic ground state and the completely ferromagnetic configurations. The values of the ground-state exchange coupling parameters are in reasonable agreement with the recent data on the magnetization jumps in megagauss magnetic fields. Simple estimates show that the obtained exchange parameters can be applied, at least qualitatively, to the description of the spin excitations in Mn12-acetate.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Propagation of local decohering action in distributed quantum systems

We study propagation of the decohering influence caused by a local measurement performed on a distributed quantum system. As an example, the gas of bosons forming a Bose-Einstein condensate is considered. We demonstrate that the local decohering perturbation exerted on the measured region propagates over the system in the form of a decoherence wave, whose dynamics is governed by elementary excitations of the system. We argue that the post-measurement evolution of the system (determined by elementary excitations) is of importance for transfer of decoherence, while the initial collapse of the wave function has negligible impact on the regions which are not directly affected by the measurement.

quant-ph↗

Neel state of antiferromagnet as a result of a local measurement in the distributed quantum system

Single-site measurement in a distributed macroscopic antiferromagnet is considered; we show that it can create antiferromagnetic sublattices at macroscopic scale. We demonstrate that the result of measurement depends on the symmetry of the ground state: for the easy-axis case the Neel state is formed, while for the easy-plane case unusual ``fan'' sublattices appear with unbroken rotational symmetry, and a decoherence wave is generated. For the latter case, a macroscopically large number of measurements is needed to pin down the orientation of the sublattices, in spite of the high degeneracy of the ground state. We note that the type of the final state and the appearance of the decoherence wave are governed by the degree of entanglement of spins in the system.

quant-ph↗

Mechanisms of decoherence in weakly anisotropic molecular magnets

Decoherence mechanisms in crystals of weakly anisotropic magnetic molecules, such as V15, are studied. We show that an important decohering factor is the rapid thermal fluctuation of dipolar interactions between magnetic molecules. A model is proposed to describe the influence of this source of decoherence. Based on the exact solution of this model, we show that at relatively high temperatures, about 0.5 K, the quantum coherence in a V15 molecule is not suppressed, and, in principle, can be detected experimentally. Therefore, these molecules may be suitable prototype systems for study of physical processes taking place in quantum computers.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Statistical coarse-graining as an approach to multiscale problems in magnetism

Multiscale phenomena which include several processes occuring simultaneously at different length scales and exchanging energy with each other, are widespread in magnetism. These phenomena often govern the magnetization reversal dynamics, and their correct modeling is important. In the present paper, we propose an approach to multiscale modeling of magnets, applying the ideas of coarse graining. We have analyzed the choice of the weighting function used in coarse graining, and propose an optimal form for this function. Simple tests provide evidence that this approach may be useful for modeling of realistic magnetic systems.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Many-Spin Effects and Tunneling Properties of Magnetic Molecules

Spin tunneling in molecular magnets has attracted much attention, however theoretical considerations of this phenomenon up to now have not taken into account the many-spin nature of molecular magnets. We present, to our knowledge, the first successful attempt of a realistic calculation of tunneling splittings for Mn$_{12}$ molecules, thus achieving a quantitatively accurate many-spin description of a real molecular magnet in the energy interval ranging from about 100 K down to 10$^{-12}$ K. Comparison with the results of the standard single-spin model shows that many-spin effects affect the tunneling splittings considerably. The values of ground state splitting given by single-spin and many-spin models differ from each other by a factor of five.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Quantum Fluctuations in Large-Spin Molecules

A new type of mesoscopic quantum effect in large-spin molecules possessing easy-axis anisotropy, such as Mn12, is predicted. The response of such a system to an external field applied perpendicular to the easy axis is considered. It is shown that the susceptibility of this system exhibits a peculiar peak of purely quantum origin. This effect arises from very general properties of quantum fluctuations in spin systems. We demonstrate that the effect is entirely accessible for contemporary experimental techniques. Our studies show that the many-spin nature of the Mn12 clusters is important for a correct description of this quantum peak.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Many-Spin Interactions and Spin Excitations in Mn12

In this work, the many-spin interactions taking place in Mn12 large-spin clusters are extensively studied using the 8-spin model Hamiltonian, for which we determine the possible parameters based on experimental data. Account of the many-spin excitations satisfactorily explains positions of the neutron scattering peaks, results of EPR measurements and the temperature dependence of magnetic susceptibility. In particular, strong Dzyaloshinsky-Morya interactions are found to be important for description of neutron scattering data. The role of these interactions for the relaxation of the magnetization is qualitatively discussed.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗