Dynamics of dissipative two-level systems in the stochastic approximation

Abstract

The dynamics of the spin-boson Hamiltonian is considered in the stochastic approximation. The Hamiltonian describes a two-level system coupled to an environment, and is widely used in physics, chemistry, and the theory of quantum measurement. We demonstrate that the method of stochastic approximation, a general method for consideration of dynamics of an arbitrary system interacting with environment, is powerful enough to reproduce qualitatively the striking results by Leggett et al. [Rev. Mod. Phys. 59, 1 (1987)] found earlier for this model system. The results include an exact expression of the dynamics in terms of the spectral density, and show the appearance of two interesting regimes for the system, i.e., pure oscillating and pure damping ones. Correlators describing the environment are also computed.