Interaction induced Landau-Zener transitions (1405.6979v1)

Abstract: By considering a quantum critical Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model we analyze a new type of Landau-Zener transitions where the population transfer is mediated by interaction rather than from a direct diabatic coupling. For this scenario, at a mean-field level the dynamics is greatly influenced by quantum interferences. In particular, regardless of how slow the Landau-Zener sweep is, for certain parameters almost no population transfer occurs, which is in stark contrast to the regular Landau-Zener model. For moderate system sizes, this counterintuitive mean-field behaviour is not duplicated in the quantum case. This can be attributed quantum fluctuations and the fact that multi-level Landau-Zener-St\"uckelberg interferences have a `dephasing' effect on the above mentioned phenomenon. We also find a discrepancy between the quantum and mean-field models in terms of how the transfer probabilities scale with the sweep velocity.