Decoherence of the two-level system coupled to a fermionic reservoir and the information transfer from it to the environment

Pei Wang

Published 2010-12-24, updated 2011-02-01Version 2

We study the evolution of reduced density matrix of an impurity coupled to a Fermi sea after the coupling is switched on at time $t=0$. We find the non-diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix decay exponentially, and the decay constant is the impurity level width $\Gamma$. And we study the information transfer rate between the impurity and the Fermi sea, which also decays exponentially. And the decay constant is $k\Gamma$ with $k=2\sim 4$. Our results reveal the relation between information transfer rate and decoherence rate.