SPP-2010-061

Evolution of a Spin-1/2 System Subject to Pulsed Magnetic Fields

Catalig, Migel Antonio P.1, Esguerra, Jose Perico H.1
1
National Institute of Physics,UP Diliman Q.C.
*Corresponding author: mcatalig@nip.upd.edu.ph
Abstract
We derive an expression for the evolution of a two spin-state system subject to
pulsed magnetic fields of varying periods. The characteristics of the noise are
rectangular pulses spread at specified times. From this, we utilized
computations in the Laplace-space. The results can be applied to computation
for a variety of random-noise processes. © 2010 Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas

PACS 05-40.-a (Fluctuation Phenomena, random processes, noise and Brownian

Motion).

1. Introduction
Magnetic fields have been shown to influence transport processes in different media. These fields can have
an effect on the energy of the quantum system. Other effects include fluctuation-induced enhancement of thermally-
assisted quantum tunneling, inversion of population in discrete quantum dissipative systems, and fluctuation-
induced absolute-negative, mobility for quantum transport. [1-4].
Other methods in the calculation of the spin-state system include the stochastic Liouville equation, and the
projection operator method. In the stochastic Liouville equation, one considers the density operator and
Hamiltonian at each short time interval of rectangular pulse, for which the Hamiltonian is constant. An
accompanying propagator is then obtained and averaged to determine the averaged value for our system. In the
projector operator method, one is still required to investigate accompanying canonical transformation relations
which could be quite cumbersome. Other methods include perturbation and variation-perturbation method. [1- 2]
In an alternate method presented in this manuscript, we directly invert the system in the Laplace space from
the Hamiltonian of the system. After the inversion, we can then directly take the averaged value in the Laplace-
space for our rectangular pulses occurring at different times, for some mean time of each pulse.

2. Derivation of the Evolution for the Two-spin state System

The General form of the Schrodinger equation is given by [5].

We subject our spin-state system to the magnetic field.

Note that the decomposition of the magnetic field into the components
and is in anticipation of future applications of the formalism to systems with
noisy magnetic fields .

The Hamiltonian of the system in matrix form is given by [5].

Where S, corresponds to the spin matrices and B corresponds to the magnetic field as in Eq. (2). The
quantity represents the electron's gyromagnetic ratio.

Now in matrix form, the expression for our system is:

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SPP-2010-061

We assume the general form of the noise as follows

The quantities represent the value of constant rectangular pulses, occurring from time
respectively.

Note that the H function is the Heaviside function. The Heaviside function is used to consider constant
noise for a given period.

From (4), we have the following equation.

We take the Laplace transform of (6a) and (6b).

Noting that [6]

Equations (6a) and (6b) becomes

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SPP-2010-061

Letting us have the following quantities.

Then we have the following equation.

and finally

3. Conclusion and Recommendations

In this paper, we have shown that the problem of evolving a spin ½ system subject to pulsed magnetic fields can be
reduced to a Laplace inversion problem.. The corresponding probabilities for the spin-up or spin down state along x,
y, z, can be calculated by proper application of the Pauli matrices. The formalism can be extended to systems with
pulsed random magnetic fields. From here, we can calculate respective evolutions of the expectation value of the
probability distribution of our system.

References
1. Goychuk, I., Hanggi, P., "Quantum two-state dynamics driven by stationary non-Markovian discrete
Noise, Chemical Physics 324 (2006) 160-171
2. Goychuk, I., Hanggi, P., "Quantum Dynamics in Strong Fluctuating Fields." Advances in Physics Vol.
54, Nos. 6-7. (September-November 2005)
3. Lin, S.H., Eyring, H., Solution of the Time-Independent Schrodinger’s Equation using the Laplace
Transform Method, PNAS 68 (1971) pp. 76-81
4. Gupta, S., "On periodically-kicked Quantum Systems", Pramana, Vol. 48, p.977-984 (1996)

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SPP-2010-061

5. Nakamura, K., "Quantum Chaos: a new paradigm of nonlinear dynamics". Cambridge University Press
(1993)
6. Griffiths, D., "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, 2nd ed.", Prentice Hall, N.J., U.S.A. (2005)
7. Arfken, G., Weber, H., "Mathematical Methods for Physicists" Academic Press (2005).

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