Quantum Surfing - Pushing a Particle through a Rough Potential

Quantum machines rely on our ability to manipulate the motion of electrons. We investigate the transport of particles by a travelling potential pulse in a one-dimensional system with quenched disorder, dissipation, and thermal noise. We simulate finite temperature and dissipation by applying the Schrodinger-Langevin equation to a single-particle hopping model. The transport is understood as a semiclassical Fokker-Planck diffusion process in the pulse frame. The semiclassical behavior arises from decoherence due to the dissipation and thermal noise. We predict that the "surfing length", our measure of transport, is exponential with pulse width. Measurements agree with drift velocities and diffusivities from simulations with a constant DC field, in the regime of high disorder and thermal noise. We also introduce an alternative nonlinear dissipative term which allows for generalization to higher dimensions and many-body systems.