Partition-free approach to open quantum systems in harmonic environments: an exact stochastic Liouville equation
Abstract
We present a partition-free approach to the evolution of density matrices for open quantum systems coupled to a harmonic environment. The influence functional formalism combined with a two-time Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation allows us to derive a set of exact differential equations for the reduced density matrix of an open system, termed the Extended Stochastic Liouville-von Neumann equation. Our approach generalises previous work based on Caldeira-Leggett models and a partitioned initial density matrix. This provides a simple, yet exact, closed-form description for the evolution of open systems from equilibriated initial conditions. The applicability of this model and the potential for numerical implementations are also discussed.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1612.05466,
title = {Partition-free approach to open quantum systems in harmonic environments: an exact stochastic Liouville equation},
author = {G. M. G. McCaul and C. D. Lorenz and L. Kantorovich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.05466},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
29 pages, 2 figures