Blocking of inter-subspace tunneling by intra-subspace inelastic scattering

Abstract

In recent years the notion of intrinsic decoherence and dephasing of a particle interacting with its environment is being investigated intensively. This has an important bearing on a plausible causal connection between incoherent c-axis resistivity and high-temperature superconductivity. In our work we study the tunnel supression and incoherent motion of a particle tunneling between two sites. The bosonic excitations of the environment are coupled to only one site inducing on-site spin flips. We show that this on-site spin flip scattering makes the tunnel motion incoherent. In the high-temperature limit incoherent rate or hopping rate has been calculated. We also briefly discuss the renormalization of the effective tunneling by environmental coupling at zero temperature following Wegner's renormalization group procedure.