Interaction-induced impeding of decoherence and anomalous diffusion

Abstract

We study how the interplay of dissipation and interactions affects the dynamics of a bosonic many-body quantum system. In the presence of both dissipation and strongly repulsive interactions, observables such as the coherence and the compressibility display three dynamical regimes: an initial exponential variation followed by a power-law regime and finally a slow exponential convergence to their asymptotic values corresponding to the infinite temperature state. These very long-time scales arise as dissipation forces the population of states disfavored by interactions. The long-time, strong coupling dynamics are understood by performing a mapping onto a classical diffusion process displaying non-Brownian behavior. While both dissipation and strong interactions tend to suppress coherence when acting separately, we find that strong interaction impedes the decoherence process generated by the dissipation.