Contributor info: Dr Gianluca Rastelli

Hannes Weisbrich, Wolfgang Belzig, Gianluca Rastelli

SciPost Phys. 6, 037 (2019) · published 26 March 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We study the decoherence and the relaxation dynamics of topological states in an extended class of quantum Ising chains which can present a manyfold ground state subspace. The leading interaction of the spins with the environment is assumed to be the local fluctuations of the transverse magnetic field. By deriving the Lindblad equation using the many-body states, we investigate the relation between decoherence, energy relaxation and topology. In particular, in the topological phase and at low temperature, we analyze the dephasing rates between the different degenerate ground states.