Anomalous decoherence effects in driven coupled quantum spin systems

Abstract

We discuss anomalous decoherence effects at zero and finite temperatures in driven coupled quantum spin systems. By numerical simulations of the quantum master equation, it is found that the entanglement of two coupled spin qubits exhibits a non-monotonic behaviour as a function of the noise strength. The effects of noise strength, the detuning and finite temperature of independent environments on the steady state entanglement are addressed in detail. Pumped by an external field drive, non-trivial steady states can be found, the steady state entanglement increases monotonically up to a maximum at certain optimal noise strength and decreases steadily for higher values. Furthermore, increasing the detuning can not only induce but also suppress steady state entanglement, which depends on the value of noise strength. At last, we delimit the border between presence or absence of steady state entanglement and discuss the related experimental temperatures where typical biomolecular systems exhibit long-lived coherences and quantum entanglement in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes.