English

Dissipation in the Caldeira-Leggett model

Quantum Physics 2017-05-17 v2 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

Caldeira and Leggett (CL) in a seminal paper derived a master equation describing Markovian Quantum Brownian motion. Such an equation suffered of not being completely positive, and many efforts have been made to solve this issue. We show that, when a careful mathematical analysis is performed, the model considered by CL leads to a non dissipative master equation. We argue that the correct way to understand the master equation derived in the CL regime is to consider it non-Markovian. Moreover, we show that if one wants to provide a microscopic description of Quantum Brownian motion with the CL model, one always needs to consider a non-Markovian dynamics. We conclude that dissipation is a genuinely non-Markovian feature.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.05024,
  title  = {Dissipation in the Caldeira-Leggett model},
  author = {L. Ferialdi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.05024},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:53:04.543Z