Phonon anomalies in pure and underdoped R{1-x}K{x}Fe{2}As{2} (R = Ba, Sr) investigated by Raman light scattering

We present a detailed temperature dependent Raman light scattering study of optical phonons in Ba{1-x}K{x}Fe{2}As{2} (x ~ 0.28, superconducting Tc ~ 29 K), Sr{1-x}K{x}Fe{2}As{2} (x ~ 0.15, Tc ~ 29 K) and non-superconducting BaFe{2}As{2} single crystals. In all samples we observe a strong continuous narrowing of the Raman-active Fe and As vibrations upon cooling below the spin-density-wave transition Ts. We attribute this effect to the opening of the spin-density-wave gap. The electron-phonon linewidths inferred from these data greatly exceed the predictions of ab-initio density functional calculations without spin polarization, which may imply that local magnetic moments survive well above Ts. A first-order structural transition accompanying the spin-density-wave transition induces discontinuous jumps in the phonon frequencies. These anomalies are increasingly suppressed for higher potassium concentrations. We also observe subtle phonon anomalies at the superconducting transition temperature Tc, with a behavior qualitatively similar to that in the cuprate superconductors.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, accepted versio

Quantum Thermalization With Couplings

We study the role of the system-bath coupling for the generalized canonical thermalization [S. Popescu, et al., Nature Physics 2,754(2006) and S. Goldstein et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 050403(2006)] that reduces almost all the pure states of the "universe" [formed by a system S plus its surrounding heat bath $B$] to a canonical equilibrium state of S. We present an exactly solvable, but universal model for this kinematic thermalization with an explicit consideration about the energy shell deformation due to the interaction between S and B. By calculating the state numbers of the "universe" and its subsystems S and B in various deformed energy shells, it is found that, for the overwhelming majority of the "universe" states (they are entangled at least), the diagonal canonical typicality remains robust with respect to finite interactions between S and B. Particularly, the kinematic decoherence is utilized here to account for the vanishing of the off-diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix of S. It is pointed out that the non-vanishing off-diagonal elements due to the finiteness of bath and the stronger system-bath interaction might offer more novelties of the quantum thermalization.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Dimerization-assisted energy transport in light-harvesting complexes

We study the role of the dimer structure of light-harvesting complex II (LH2) in excitation transfer from the LH2 (without a reaction center (RC)) to the LH1 (surrounding the RC), or from the LH2 to another LH2. The excited and un-excited states of a bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) are modeled by a quasi-spin. In the framework of quantum open system theory, we represent the excitation transfer as the total leakage of the LH2 system and then calculate the transfer efficiency and average transfer time. For different initial states with various quantum superposition properties, we study how the dimerization of the B850 BChl ring can enhance the transfer efficiency and shorten the average transfer time.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Decoherence-Based Quantum Zeno Effect in a Cavity-QED System

We present a decoherence-based interpretation for the quantum Zeno effect (QZE) where measurements are dynamically treated as dispersive couplings of the measured system to the apparatus, rather than the von Neumann's projections. It is found that the explicit dependence of the survival probability on the decoherence time quantitatively distinguishes this dynamic QZE from the usual one based on projection measurements. By revisiting the cavity-QED experiment of the QZE [J. Bernu, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett, 101, 180402 (2008)], we suggest an alternative scheme to verify our theoretical consideration that frequent measurements slow down the increase of photon number inside a microcavity due to the nondemolition couplings with the atoms in large detuning.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure