Geometry and restoration of the quantum Mpemba effect beyond weak-coupling regime in the spin-boson model

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 18 Mar 2026] Geometry and restoration of the quantum Mpemba effect beyond weak-coupling regime in the spin-boson model P. Chirico, G. Di Bello, G. De Filippis, C. A. Perroni Understanding relaxation dynamics in open quantum systems is a central problem in nonequilibrium quantum physics. Here we investigate the quantum Mpemba effect in the spin-boson model. In the weak-coupling Markovian regime we show that the occurrence of the effect strongly depends on the choice of distance measure at low temperature: while it appears in the trace distance, it can disappear in the quantum relative entropy. Going beyond the weak-coupling approximation, numerically exact simulations of the full system-bath dynamics reveal that increasing coupling enhances the effect in the trace distance and restores it in the quantum relative entropy. For all spin-bath couplings prior to delocalized-localized quantum phase transition, we uncover a simple geometric structure of the effect on the Bloch sphere: within the excited-state hemisphere, pairs of states related by rotations generically exhibit relaxation-order inversion. These results highlight the role of geometry and system-environment correlations in anomalous quantum relaxation. Comments: 7 pages, 5 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) Cite as: arXiv:2603.17565 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2603.17565v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.17565 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Carmine Antonio Perroni [view email] [v1] Wed, 18 Mar 2026 10:13:48 UTC (1,671 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.mes-hall References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)