Dephasing dynamics of an impurity coupled to an anharmonic environment

Abstract

We analyze the dephasing dynamics of an impurity coupled to an anharmonic environment. We show that a strong anharmonicity produces two different effects depending on the environment temperature: for high temperatures, the system suffers a strong dephasing, while for low temperatures there is a strong information back-flow (as measured by the Breuer-Laine-Piilo (BLP) non-Markovianity measure). Both dephasing and back-flow are particularly significant when the anharmonic potential allows environment states very close to the dissociation limit. In contrast, the information back-flow is suppressed when assuming the environment to be Gaussian. In this regard, we find that the Gaussian approximation is particularly poor at low temperatures.