Dissipation-free modes in dissipative systems

Abstract

The coupling between a system and its environment (or bath) always leads to dissipation. We show, however, that a system composed of two subsystems can have a dissipation-free mode, if the bath is shared between the two subsystems. Reading in reverse, a shared bath does not contribute to the dissipation of all modes. As a key example, we consider a simple model for a two-sublattice antiferromagnet, where the environment is modeled by a bath that is shared between the two sublattice magnetizations. In our model, we find that the N\'eel order parameter is a dissipation-free mode. For antiferromagnets, our results offer an explanation for why the dissipation rate of the N\'eel vector is typically much lower than that of the average magnetization. In general, our results suggest a way to reduce dissipation (and decoherence) for some modes in composite systems, which could have experimental and technological applications.