Exact master equation and general non-Markovian dynamics in open quantum systems (original) (raw)
2019, The European Physical Journal Special Topics
Investigations of quantum and mesoscopic thermodynamics force one to answer two fundamental questions associated with the foundations of statistical mechanics: (i) how does macroscopic irreversibility emerge from microscopic reversibility? (ii) how does the system relax in general to thermal equilibrium with its environment? The answers to these questions rely on a deep understanding of nonequilibrium dynamics of systems interacting with their environments. Decoherence is also a main concern in developing quantum information technology. In the past two decades, many theoretical and experimental investigations have devoted to this topic, most of these investigations take the Markov (memory-less) approximation. These investigations have provided a partial understanding to several fundamental issues, such as quantum measurement and the quantum-to-classical transition, etc. However, experimental implementations of nanoscale solidstate quantum information processing makes strong non-Markovian memory effects unavoidable, thus rendering their study a pressing and vital issue. Through the rigorous derivation of the exact master equation and a systematical exploration of various non-Markovian processes for a large class of open quantum systems, we find that decoherence manifests unexpected complexities. We demonstrate these general non-Markovian dynamics manifested in different open quantum systems.
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