Supurna Sinha

The study of decoherence plays a key role in our understanding of the transition from the quantum to the classical world. Typically, one considers a system coupled to an external bath which forms a model for an open quantum system. While most of the studies pertain to a position coupling between the system and the environment, some involve a momentum coupling, giving rise to an anomalous diffusive model. Here we have gone beyond existing studies and analysed the quantum Langevin dynamics of a harmonically oscillating charged Brownian particle in the presence of a magnetic field and coupled to an Ohmic heat bath via both position and momentum couplings. The presence of both position and momentum couplings leads to a stronger interaction with the environment, resulting in a faster loss of coherence compared to a situation where only position coupling is present. The rate of decoherence can be tuned by controlling the relative strengths of the position and momentum coupling parameters. In addition, the magnetic field results in the slowing down of the loss of information from the system, irrespective of the nature of coupling between the system and the bath. Our results can be experimentally verified by designing a suitable ion trap setup.

We investigate the time dependent orbital diamagnetic moment of a charged particle in a magnetic field in a viscous medium via the Quantum Langevin Equation. We study how the interplay between the cyclotron frequency and the viscous damping rate governs the dynamics of the orbital magnetic moment in the high temperature classical domain and the low temperature quantum domain for an Ohmic bath. These predictions can be tested via state of the art cold atom experiments with hybrid traps for ions and neutral atoms. We also study the effect of a confining potential on the dynamics of the magnetic moment. We obtain the expected Bohr Van Leeuwen limit in the high temperature, asymptotic time ($ γt\longrightarrow \infty$, where $ γ$ is the viscous damping coefficient) limit.

We investigate the Brownian motion of a charged particle in a magnetic field. We study this in the high temperature classical and low temperature quantum domains. In both domains, we observe a transition of the mean square displacement from a monotonic behaviour to a damped oscillatory behaviour as one increases the strength of the magnetic field. When the strength of the magnetic field is negligible, the mean square displacement grows linearly with time in the classical domain and logarithmically with time in the quantum domain. We notice that these features of the mean square displacement are robust and remain essentially the same for an Ohmic dissipation model and a single relaxation time model for the memory kernel. The predictions stemming from our analysis can be tested against experiments in trapped cold ions.