Decoherence in adiabatic quantum evolution: application to Cooper pair pumping

Abstract

One of the challenges of adiabatic control theory is the proper inclusion of the effects of dissipation. Here we study the adiabatic dynamics of an open two-level quantum system deriving a generalized master equation to consistently account for the combined action of the driving and dissipation. We demonstrate that in the zero-temperature limit the ground state dynamics is not affected by environment. As an example, we apply our theory to Cooper pair pumping, which demonstrates the robustness of ground state adiabatic evolution.