Decoherence Induced by a Spin Chain: Role of Initial Prepared States

Abstract

We study the decoherence process induced by a spin chain environment on a central spin consisting of R spins and we apply it on the dynamics of quantum correlations (QCs) of three interacting qubits. To see the impact of the initially prepared state of the spin chain environment on the decoherence process, we assume the spin chain environment prepared in two main ways, namely, either the ground state or the vacuum state in the momentum space. We develop a general heuristic analysis when the spin chain environment is prepared in these states, to understand the decoherence process against the physical parameters. We show that the decoherence process is mainly determined by the choice of the initially prepared state, the number of spins of the chain, the coupling strength, the anisotropy parameter and the position from the quantum critical point. In fact, in the strong coupling regime, the decoherence process does not appear for the environment prepared in the vacuum state and it behaves oscillatory in the case of evolution from the ground state. On the other hand, in the weak coupling regime and far from the quantum critical point, decoherence induced by the ground state is weaker than that of the vacuum state. Finally, we show that QCs are completely shielded from decoherence in the case of evolution from the W state and obey the same dynamics as the decoherence factors for the GHZ state.