Critical Dynamics of Spin Boson Model

Abstract

In this work, we study the low-energy properties of the spin-boson model (SBM), which describes the dynamics of a spin-1/2 coupled to a bosonic environment characterized by a power-law spectral density $f(\ddot{I}‰)\propto \ddot{I}{‰}^s$. The theoretical description is based on the Schwinger--Keldysh technique combined with a Majorana spinor representation of the spin. This approach enables a renormalization group analysis of the model's critical dynamics without relying on quantum-classical mapping. We show that the transition from a delocalized to a localized state arises due to a Wilson--Fisher fixed point in both the ohmic ($s=1$) and sub-ohmic ($s<1$) cases. Our analysis recovers key results of Leggett's theory and identifies $s=1/2$ as the upper critical dimension, marking the boundary where critical exponents become mean-field. The findings are in good agreement with the predictions of quantum-classical mapping and state-of-the-art numerical data.

13 pages, 16 figures