English

A weak-coupling master equation for arbitrary initial conditions

Quantum Physics 2017-05-17 v1

Abstract

The structure of the initial system-environment state is fundamental to determining the nature and characteristics of the evolution of such an open quantum system. The usual assumption is to consider that the initial system-environment state is separable. Here, we go beyond this simple case and derive the evolution equations, up to second order in a weak-coupling expansion, that describe the evolution of the reduced density matrix of the system for any arbitrary system-environment initial state. The structure of these equations allows us to determine the initial conditions for which a Lindblad form can be recovered once applying the Markov and secular approximations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.07497,
  title  = {A weak-coupling master equation for arbitrary initial conditions},
  author = {Jad C. Halimeh and Ines de Vega},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.07497},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages and 2 figures in main text, 7 pages and 2 figures in supplementary material

R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:08:23.447Z