Time evolution and decoherence of a spin-1/2 particle coupled to a spin bath in thermal equilibrium

The time evolution of a spin-1/2 particle under the influence of a locally applied external magnetic field, and interacting with anisotropic spin environment in thermal equilibrium at temperature T is studied. The exact analytical form of the reduced density matrix of the central spin is calculated explicitly for a finite number of bath spins. The case of an infinite number of environmental spins is investigated using the convergence of the rescaled bath operators to normal Gaussian random variables. In this limit, we derive the analytical form of the components of the Bloch vector for antiferromagnetic interactions within the bath, and we investigate the short-time and long-time behavior of reduced dynamics. The effect of the external magnetic field, the anisotropy, and the temperature of the bath on the decoherence of the central spin are discussed.