Leggett-Garg inequality for qubits coupled to thermal environment

Abstract

We study violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality for the correlator ${K}_{3}$ in two cases: (i) for a qubit weakly coupled to a thermal decohering (dissipative and/or dephasing) environment and (ii) for a pair of qubits with only one of them coupled to the environment. In the case of a single qubit, we identify conditions depending both on initial state preparation and a measurement protocol when violation of the ${K}_{3}$ inequality becomes dependent only on dephasing and independent of dissipation and temperature. In the case of two qubits, we have found the temperature-independent regime as well as the regime where all three components of the decoherence can control violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality.