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Environmental non-additivity and strong-coupling in non-equilibrium quantum systems

Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery

We consider quantum systems coupled simultaneously to multiple environments. Examples include solid-state photon emitters, with coupling both to vibrations and the electromagnetic field, and molecular nanojunctions, with coupling both to vibrations and electronic leads. We show that enforcing additivity of such combined influences results in non-equilibrium dynamics that does not respect the Franck-Condon principle in the former case, and can lead to unphysical electronic current under equilibrium conditions in the latter. We overcome these shortcomings by employing a collective coordinate representation of the vibrational environment, which permits the derivation of a non-additive master equation. When applied to a two-level emitter our treatment predicts decreasing photon emission rates with increasing vibrational coupling, consistent with Franck-Condon physics. Applied to a molecular nanojunction we employ counting statistics techniques to track electron flow between the system and the electronic leads, revealing both strong-coupling and non-additive effects in the electron current, noise and Fano factor.

Mathematics; Quantum theory; Statistical mechanics, structure of matter

video/mp4

Author affiliation: University of Manchester

2020-02-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/73548

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/