1206.2002 (S. Camalet)

Steady Schrodinger cat state in a two-heat-reservoir environment    [PDF]

S. Camalet

For short-range interacting two-level systems, no Schr\"odinger cat state can be stable when their environment is in thermal equilibrium. We show, by studying a specific example, that this is possible when the environment consists of two heat reservoirs at different temperatures. The steady state of the considered chain of two-level systems is a pure superposition of mesoscopically distinct states in an appropriate low temperatures regime. The main feature of our model leading to this result is the fact that both the Hamiltonian of the chain and the dominant part of its coupling to the environment obey the same symmetry.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.2002