Control of decoherence and relaxation by frequency modulation of a heat bath

Abstract

We demonstrate, in a very general fashion, the considerable slowing down of decoherence and relaxation by fast frequency modulation of the system-heat-bath coupling. The slowing occurs as the decoherence rates are now determined by the spectral components of bath correlations which are shifted due to fast modulation. We present several examples including the slowing down of the heating of a trapped ion, where the system-bath interaction is not necessarily Markovian.