Eur. Phys. J. B (2012) 85: 143
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2012-21022-7

Regular Article

Study of Loschmidt Echo for a qubit coupled to an XY-spin chain environment

¹ Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, 208016 Kanpur, India
² Institut de Physique Théorique, CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France

^a e-mail: shrdha@iitk.ac.in

Received: 12 December 2011
Received in final form: 5 February 2012
Published online: 30 April 2012

Abstract

We study the temporal evolution of a central spin-1/2 (qubit) coupled to the environment which is chosen to be a spin-1/2 transverse XY spin chain. We explore the entire phase diagram of the spin-Hamiltonian and investigate the behavior of Loschmidt echo(LE) close to critical and multicritical point(MCP). To achieve this, the qubit is coupled to the spin chain through the anisotropy term as well as one of the interaction terms. Our study reveals that the echo has a faster decay with the system size (in the short time limit) close to a MCP and also the scaling obeyed by the quasiperiod of the collapse and revival of the LE is different in comparison to that close to a QCP. We also show that even when approached along the gapless critical line, the scaling of the LE is determined by the MCP where the energy gap shows a faster decay with the system size. This claim is verified by studying the short-time and also the collapse and revival behavior of the LE at a quasicritical point on the ferromagnetic side of the MCP. We also connect our observation to the decoherence of the central spin.