Alternative Derivation of the Hu-Paz-Zhang Master Equation for Quantum Brownian Motion
Quantum Physics
2009-10-28 v1
Abstract
Hu, Paz and Zhang [ B.L. Hu, J.P. Paz and Y. Zhang, Phys. Rev. D {\bf 45} (1992) 2843] have derived an exact master equation for quantum Brownian motion in a general environment via path integral techniques. Their master equation provides a very useful tool to study the decoherence of a quantum system due to the interaction with its environment. In this paper, we give an alternative and elementary derivation of the Hu-Paz-Zhang master equation, which involves tracing the evolution equation for the Wigner function. We also discuss the master equation in some special cases.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/9508004,
title = {Alternative Derivation of the Hu-Paz-Zhang Master Equation for Quantum Brownian Motion},
author = {J. J. Halliwell and T. Yu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/9508004},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
17 pages, Revtex