Abstract The article reviews the theory of open quantum system from a perspective of the non-Hermiticity that emerges from the environment with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The non-Hermiticity produces resonant states with complex eigenvalues, resulting in peak structures in scattering amplitudes and transport coefficients. After introducing the definition of resonant states with complex eigenvalues, we answer typical questions regarding the non-Hermiticity of open quantum systems. What is the physical meaning of the complex eigenmomenta and eigenenergies? How and why do the resonant states break the time-reversal symmetry that the system observes? Can we make the probabilistic interpretation of the resonant states with diverging wave functions? What is the physical meaning of the divergence of the wave functions? We also present an alternative way of finding resonant states, namely the Feshbach formalism, in which we eliminate the infinite number of the environmental degrees of freedom. In this formalism, we attribute the non-Hermiticity to the introduction of the retarded and advanced Green’s functions.
Abstract The article reviews the theory of open quantum system from a perspective of the non-Hermiticity that emerges from the environment with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. The non-Hermiticity produces resonant states with complex eigenvalues, resulting in peak structures in scattering amplitudes and transport coefficients. After introducing the definition of resonant states with complex eigenvalues, we answer typical questions regarding the non-Hermiticity of open quantum systems. What is the physical meaning of the complex eigenmomenta and eigenenergies? How and why do the resonant states break the time-reversal symmetry that the system observes? Can we make the probabilistic interpretation of the resonant states with diverging wave functions? What is the physical meaning of the divergence of the wave functions? We also present an alternative way of finding resonant states, namely the Feshbach formalism, in which we eliminate the infinite number of the environmental degrees of freedom. In this formalism, we attribute the non-Hermiticity to the introduction of the retarded and advanced Green’s functions.
We review analyses of open quantum systems. We show how non-Hermiticity arises in an open quantum system with an infinite environment, focusing on the one-body problem. One of the reasons for taking the present approach is that we can solve the problem completely, making it easier to see the structures of problems involving open quantum systems. We show that this results in the discovery of a new complete set, which is one of the main topics of the present article. Another reason for focusing on the one-body problem is that the theory permits the strong coupling between the system and the environment. In the current research landscape, it is valuable to revisit the one-body problem for open quantum systems, which can be solved accurately for arbitrary strengths of the system-environment couplings. A rigorous understanding of the problem structures in the present approach will be helpful when we tackle problems with many-body interactions. First, we consider potential scattering and directly define the resonant state as an eigenstate of the Schrödinger equation under the Siegert outgoing boundary condition. We show that the resonant eigenstate can have a complex energy eigenvalue, even though the Hamiltonian is seemingly Hermitian. Second, we introduce the Feshbach formalism, which eliminates the infinite degrees of freedom of the environment and represents its effect as a complex potential. The resulting effective Hamiltonian is explicitly non-Hermitian. By unifying these two ways of defining resonant states, we obtain a new complete set of bases for the scattering problem that contains all discrete eigenstates, including resonant states. We finally mention the non-Markovian dynamics of open quantum systems. We emphasize the time-reversal symmetry of the dynamics that continuously connects the past and the future. We can capture it using the new complete set that we develop here.
We first show that quantum resonant states observe particle number conservation and hence are consistent with the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.We then present for a class of quantum open systems, a resonant-state expansion of the sum of the retarded and advanced Green's functions.The expansion is given purely in terms of all discrete eigenstates and does not contain any background integrals.Using the expansion, we argue that the Fano asymmetry of resonance peaks is interpreted as interference between discrete eigenstates.We microscopically derive the Fano parameters for several cases.
It is one of the most important and long-standing issues of physics to derive the irreversibility out of a time-reversal symmetric equation of motion. The present paper considers the breaking of the time-reversal symmetry in open quantum systems and the emergence of an arrow of time. We claim that the time-reversal symmetric Schrödinger equation can have eigenstates that break the time-reversal symmetry if the system is open in the sense that it has at least a countably infinite number of states. Such eigenstates, namely the resonant and anti-resonant states, have complex eigenvalues. We show that, although these states are often called "unphysical", they observe the probability conservation in a particular way. We also comment that the seemingly Hermitian Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian in the functional space of the resonant and anti-resonant states, and hence there is no contradiction in the fact that it has complex eigenvalues. We finally show how the existence of the states that break the time-reversal symmetry affects the quantum dynamics. The dynamics that starts from a time-reversal symmetric initial state is dominated by the resonant states for t > 0 ; this explains the phenomenon of the arrow of time, in which the decay excels the growth. The time-reversal symmetry holds in that the dynamic ending at a time-reversal symmetric final state is dominated by the anti-resonant states for t < 0 .
Abstract Open quantum systems are often represented by non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonians that have complex eigenvalues associated with resonances. In previous work we showed that the evolution of tight-binding open systems can be represented by an explicitly time-reversal symmetric expansion involving all the discrete eigenstates of the effective Hamiltonian. These eigenstates include complex-conjugate pairs of resonant and anti-resonant states. An initially time-reversal-symmetric state contains equal contributions from the resonant and anti-resonant states. Here we show that as the state evolves in time, the symmetry between the resonant and anti-resonant states is automatically broken, with resonant states becoming dominant for t > 0 and anti-resonant states becoming dominant for t < 0 . Further, we show that there is a time-scale for this symmetry-breaking, which we associate with the ‘Zeno time’. We also compare the time-reversal symmetric expansion with an asymmetric expansion used previously by several researchers. We show how the present time-reversal symmetric expansion bypasses the non-Hilbert nature of the resonant and anti-resonant states, which previously introduced exponential divergences into the asymmetric expansion.
We present a new complete set of states for a class of open quantum systems, to be used in expansion of the Green’s function and the time-evolution operator. A remarkable feature of the complete set is that it observes time-reversal symmetry in the sense that it contains decaying states (resonant states) and growing states (anti-resonant states) parallelly. We can thereby pinpoint the occurrence of the breaking of time-reversal symmetry at the choice of whether we solve Schrödinger equation as an initial-condition problem or a terminal-condition problem. Another feature of the complete set is that in the subspace of the central scattering area of the system, it consists of contributions of all states with point spectra but does not contain any background integrals. In computing the time evolution, we can clearly see contribution of which point spectrum produces which time dependence. In the whole infinite state space, the complete set does contain an integral but it is over unperturbed eigenstates of the environmental area of the system and hence can be calculated analytically. We demonstrate the usefulness of the complete set by computing explicitly the survival probability and the escaping probability as well as the dynamics of wave packets. The origin of each term of matrix elements is clear in our formulation, particularly, the exponential decays due to the resonance poles.
A review is given on the foundations and applications of non-Hermitian classical and quantum physics. First, key theorems and central concepts in non-Hermitian linear algebra, including Jordan normal form, biorthogonality, exceptional points, pseudo-Hermiticity, and parity-time symmetry, are delineated in a pedagogical and mathematically coherent manner. Building on these, we provide an overview of how diverse classical systems, ranging from photonics, mechanics, electrical circuits, and acoustics to active matter, can be used to simulate non-Hermitian wave physics. In particular, we discuss rich and unique phenomena found therein, such as unidirectional invisibility, enhanced sensitivity, topological energy transfer, coherent perfect absorption, single-mode lasing, and robust biological transport. We then explain in detail how non-Hermitian operators emerge as an effective description of open quantum systems on the basis of the Feshbach projection approach and the quantum trajectory approach. We discuss their applications to physical systems relevant to a variety of fields, including atomic, molecular and optical physics, mesoscopic physics, and nuclear physics with emphasis on prominent phenomena and subjects in quantum regimes, such as quantum resonances, superradiance, the continuous quantum Zeno effect, quantum critical phenomena, Dirac spectra in quantum chromodynamics, and nonunitary conformal field theories. Finally, we introduce the notion of band topology in complex spectra of non-Hermitian systems and present their classifications by providing the proof, first given by this review in a complete manner, as well as a number of instructive examples. Other topics related to non-Hermitian physics, including nonreciprocal transport, speed limits, nonunitary quantum walk, are also reviewed.