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  • Open Access

Interplay of noise and reservoir-induced decoherence in persistent currents

Samudra Sur* and Thierry Giamarchi

  • Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, Quai Ernest-Ansermet 24, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

  • *Contact author: samudra.sur@unige.ch
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043141 – Published 9 November, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/486b-4qgc

Abstract

Persistent current is a hallmark of quantum phase coherence. We study the fate of the persistent current in a nonequilibrium setting, where a tight-binding ring is subjected to stochastic disorder as well as a fermionic reservoir attached to each site. We evaluate the current using the Keldysh technique and find that it exhibits nonmonotonic behavior, suggesting two distinct mechanisms of decoherence. While coupling to the reservoirs introduces a coherence length scale given by the inverse of the coupling strength, the other mechanism is more subtle and driven by the ratio of noise strength to reservoir coupling. The interplay of noise and reservoir constitutes a purely nonequilibrium steady state with a flatter distribution function that we effectively describe using classical rate equations. We also discuss possibilities of realizing our findings in ultracold-atom experiments.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 043141– Published 9 November, 2026
  • Received 11 October 2025
  • Accepted 12 September 2026
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