Kinetic transport theory with quantum coherence
Abstract
We derive transport equations for fermions and bosons in spatially or temporally varying backgrounds with special symmetries, by use of the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. In a noninteracting theory the coherence information is shown to be encoded in new singular shells for the 2-point function. Imposing this phase space structure to the interacting theory leads to a a self-consistent equation of motion for a physcial density matrix, including coherence and a well defined collision integral. The method is applied e.g. to demonstrate how an initially coherent out-of-equlibrium state approaches equlibrium through decoherence and thermalization.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0811.0936,
title = {Kinetic transport theory with quantum coherence},
author = {Matti Herranen and Kimmo Kainulainen and Pyry M. Rahkila},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.0936},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
4 pages. To appear in the proceedings of the 8th Conference on Strong and Electroweak Matter (SEWM08), Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 26-29 August 2008