Quantum Kibble-Zurek physics in the presence of spatially correlated dissipation

• Published in: Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Condensed matter and materials physics, 2015-07, Vol.92 (1), Article 014306
• Main Authors: Nalbach, P., Vishveshwara, Smitha, Clerk, Aashish A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Condensed matter; Correlation; Critical point; Defects; Density; Dissipation; Mathematical analysis; Noise
• ISSN: 1098-0121; 1550-235X
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.92.014306

We study how the universal properties of quantum quenches across critical points are modified by a weak coupling to a thermal bath, focusing on the paradigmatic case of the transverse field Ising model. Beyond the standard quench-induced Kibble-Zurek defect production in the absence of the bath, the bath contributes extra thermal defects. We show that spatial correlations in the noise produced by the bath can play a crucial role: one obtains quantitatively different scaling regimes depending on whether the correlation length of the noise is smaller or larger than the Kibble-Zurek length associated with the quench speed, and the thermal length set by the temperature. For the case of spatially correlated bath noise, additional thermal defect generation is restricted to a window that is both quantum critical and excluded from the nonequilibrium regime surrounding the critical point. We map the dissipative quench problem to a set of effectively independent dissipative Landau-Zener problems. Using this mapping along with both analytic and numerical calculations allows us to find the scaling of the excess defect density produced in the quench, and it suggests a generic picture for such dissipative quenches.