Adiabatic dynamics in open quantum critical many-body systems

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to understand the effect of an external environment on the adiabatic dynamics of a quantum critical system. By means of scaling arguments we derive a general expression for the density of excitations produced in the quench as a function of its velocity and of the temperature of the bath. We corroborate the scaling analysis by explicitly solving the case of a one-dimensional quantum Ising model coupled to an Ohmic bath.

4 pages, 4 figures; revised version to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett