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arXiv:2408.11893 · Physical Review A

Third-quantized master equations as a classical Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process

Léonce Dupays

Published Nov 6, 2025• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Third quantization is used in open quantum systems to construct a superoperator basis in which quadratic Lindbladians can be turned into a normal form. From it follows the spectral properties of the Lindbladian, including eigenvalues and eigenvectors. However, the connection between third quantization and the semiclassical representations usually employed to obtain the dynamics of open quantum systems remains opaque. We introduce an alternative basis for third quantization that bridges this gap between third quantization and the $Q$ representation by projecting the master equation onto a superoperator coherent-state basis. The equation of motion reduces to a multidimensional complex Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.

DOI
10.1103/ntv6-jzvb

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Third quantization is used in open quantum systems to construct a superoperator basis in which quadratic Lindbladians can be turned into a normal form. From it follows the spectral properties of the Lindbladian, including eigenvalues and eigenvectors. However, the connection between third quantization and the semiclassical representations usually employed to obtain the dynamics of open quantum systems remains opaque. We introduce an alternative basis for third quantization that bridges this gap between third quantization and the QQQ representation by projecting the master equation onto a superoperator coherent-state basis. The equation of motion reduces to a multidimensional complex Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process.
The connections between standard theoretical tools used to study open quantum systems can sometimes seem opaque. Whether it is a Lindblad master equation, the equation of motion for the Wigner function, or a dissipative Keldysh action, features evident in one formalism are often masked in another. Here, we reformulate the technique of third quantization in a way that explicitly connects all three methods. We first show that our formulation reveals a fundamental dissipative symmetry present in all quadratic bosonic or fermionic Lindbladians. This symmetry can then be used to easily diagonalize these models, and it provides an intuitive way to demonstrate the separation of dissipation and fluctuations in linear systems. For bosons, we then show that the Wigner function and the characteristic function can be thought of as ``wave functions'' of the density matrix in the eigenbasis of the third-quantized superoperators we introduce. The field-theory representation of the time-evolution operator in this basis is then the Keldysh path integral. To highlight the utility of our approach, we apply our version of third quantization to a dissipative nonlinear oscillator, and we use it to obtain new exact results.
Abstract Open quantum systems that interact with a Markovian environment can be described by a Lindblad master equation. The generator of time-translation is given by a Liouvillian superoperator acting on the density matrix of the system. As the Fock space for a single bosonic mode is already infinite-dimensional, the diagonalization of the Liouvillian has to be done on the creation- and annihilation-superoperators, a process called ‘third quantization’. We propose a method to solve the Liouvillian for quadratic systems using a single symplectic transformation. We show that the non-Hermitian effective Hamiltonian of the system, next to incorporating the dynamics of the system, is a tool to analyze its symmetries. As an example, we use the effective Hamiltonian to formulate a -‘symmetry’ of an open system. We describe how the inclusion of source terms allows us to obtain the cumulant generating function for observables such as the photon current.
Abstract The dynamics of Markovian open quantum systems are described by Lindblad master equations. For fermionic and bosonic systems that are quasi-free, i.e. with Hamiltonians that are quadratic in the ladder operators and Lindblad operators that are linear in the ladder operators, we derive the equation of motion for the covariance matrix. This determines the evolution of Gaussian initial states and the steady states, which are also Gaussian. Using ladder super-operators (a.k.a. third quantization), we show how the Liouvillian can be transformed to a many-body Jordan normal form which also reveals the full many-body spectrum. Extending previous work by Prosen and Seligman, we treat fermionic and bosonic systems on equal footing with Majorana operators, shorten and complete some derivations, also address the odd-parity sector for fermions, give a criterion for the existence of bosonic steady states, cover non-diagonalizable Liouvillians also for bosons, and include quadratic systems. In extension of the quasi-free open systems, quadratic open systems comprise additional Hermitian Lindblad operators that are quadratic in the ladder operators. While Gaussian states may then evolve into non-Gaussian states, the Liouvillian can still be transformed to a useful block-triangular form, and the equations of motion for k -point Green’s functions form a closed hierarchy. Based on this formalism, results on criticality and dissipative phase transitions in such models are discussed in a companion paper.
Open quantum systems, which interact with their environments, exhibit non-unitary dynamics that are fundamentally different from the unitary evolution of closed systems. The conventional Jordan canonical form, a powerful tool for analyzing linear operators, falls short in providing a complete and physically intuitive decomposition for the superoperators governing the dynamics of open quantum systems, such as the Lindblad superoperator. This limitation arises from the non-Hermitian and often non-diagonalizable nature of these superoperators, whose spectral properties encode critical information about dissipation, decoherence, and relaxation to steady states. This paper introduces and rigorously develops a novel canonical form specifically tailored for the Lindblad superoperator describing Markovian open quantum systems. We propose a decomposition that systematically separates coherent, dissipative, and coupling components, offering a more profound insight into the underlying physical processes. Our methodology leverages advancements in the theory of non-Hermitian operators and Lie algebraic structures of Lindblad operators to construct this form. We demonstrate that this new canonical representation not only clarifies the spectral properties, including the identification of steady states and decay rates, but also provides a systematic framework for analyzing complex open quantum system dynamics. The proposed canonical form promises to significantly advance the analytical capabilities in quantum information, quantum control, and quantum thermodynamics by offering a clearer, more interpretable representation of non-unitary evolution.
We investigate the algebraic structure underlying the Lindblad equation for finite-dimensional open quantum systems. By introducing a suitable operator representation of the Liouville superoperator, we show that the dynamics can be formulated in terms of a closed algebra of Hermitian operators that is independent of the particular physical model. This formulation reveals that dissipative dynamics requires a substantially richer algebraic structure than purely unitary evolution, thereby providing a clear characterization of the additional complexity introduced by the Lindbladian. The resulting framework naturally leads to parametrizations of the dynamical map and to differential equations governing its evolution. We further derive recursion relations that enable the efficient construction of the algebra for systems of increasing dimension. Because the algebraic basis is universal, while all model-dependent information enters through a single set of coefficients, the proposed approach significantly reduces the computational cost of constructing the Liouville superoperator compared with direct methods. To facilitate the implementation of the method, we provide a Mathematica notebook containing a one-qubit example that can be systematically extended to an arbitrary number of qubits. The proposed framework therefore provides both a general mathematical description of finite-dimensional Lindblad dynamics and a practical foundation for efficient analytical and numerical implementations.