This paper is devoted to the development of a rigorous theory of angular-momentum relaxation. It is shown that by incorporating quantum-dynamical semigroups in the quantum Markovian master equation, the theory becomes mathematically sound. The expansion of the initial relaxation process in terms of primary relaxation processes of rank l offers a clearer view of the relaxation process structure. A close look at experimental procedure (the system Hilbert space structure, symmetry of the environment, and multipolarities of the system-environment interaction) gives all the information needed to simplify the structure of the relaxation equation and renders it a powerful tool for considering specific physical effects. The quantum Markovian master equation in the state multipole representation is obtained and the physical meaning of the parameters involved is found. The general approach is used for the study of a Zeeman multiplet. The relaxation rates as functions of the spectral densities of correlations (describing the environment properties) are given in an explicit form. Cross relaxation and cross correlation are taken properly into account there. The important case of spin 1 is discussed in more detail. Some useful expressions and relations among the relaxation rates are given in the Appendixes.
This paper is devoted to the development of a rigorous theory of angular-momentum relaxation. It is shown that by incorporating quantum-dynamical semigroups in the quantum Markovian master equation, the theory becomes mathematically sound. The expansion of the initial relaxation process in terms of primary relaxation processes of rank l offers a clearer view of the relaxation process structure. A close look at experimental procedure (the system Hilbert space structure, symmetry of the environment, and multipolarities of the system-environment interaction) gives all the information needed to simplify the structure of the relaxation equation and renders it a powerful tool for considering specific physical effects. The quantum Markovian master equation in the state multipole representation is obtained and the physical meaning of the parameters involved is found. The general approach is used for the study of a Zeeman multiplet. The relaxation rates as functions of the spectral densities of correlations (describing the environment properties) are given in an explicit form. Cross relaxation and cross correlation are taken properly into account there. The important case of spin 1 is discussed in more detail. Some useful expressions and relations among the relaxation rates are given in the Appendixes.
The theory of open quantum systems represents one of the major developments of quantum mechanics over the last 50 years. Its central object of study is constituted by quantum systems that cannot be regarded as fully isolated, but instead interact with additional degrees of freedom, giving rise to irreversible phenomena such as dissipation and decoherence. The tools provided by this framework are nowadays of paramount importance across many active areas of research, including quantum computation, thermodynamics, metrology and biology. In this thesis, we investigate three main topics within the field. The first contribution concerns the microscopic derivation of the evolution equations, socalled quantum master equations, for open systems which are also subject to external driving fields. Standard techniques developed for time-independent Hamiltonians encounter several difficulties in the time-dependent case, largely restricting their applicability to specific instances, such as periodic or adiabatic drivings. In contrast, a core result of the derivation presented in the thesis is that, when the environment is sufficiently Markovian (essentially, memoryless), the non-adiabatic contributions to the driving field can be neglected in a controlled fashion, yielding an accurate master equation with time-dependent generator, capable of correctly reproducing the open dynamics even for strong drivings. This result is further supported by benchmarks against numerically exact simulations. The second contribution addresses the long-time behavior of general types of (Markovian) quantum master equations, including those of the form introduced above. While this problem has been extensively analyzed in the time-independent setting, virtually no results are known for time-dependent generators. In particular, we establish the foundations of a general theory of relaxation, that is, convergence towards an asymptotic trajectory in the long-time limit, independently of the initial state. The main results include a theorem guaranteeing sufficient conditions for relaxation and the derivation of a rate function governing the convergence to the asymptotic trajectory. The analysis is further extended to a simple non-Markovian case. Moreover, we treat in detail the specific master equation derived in the first part, connecting the aforementioned relaxation property directly to the underlying microscopic dynamics. The third contribution investigates chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effects from the perspective of open quantum systems. Although the majority of theoretical studies aiming to model CISS are based on a coherent description of the spin dynamics, such effects have been observed also for electrons subject to incoherent transport across molecular networks. In this regard, we provide a rigorous ab initio derivation of the microscopic Hamiltonian describing the electronic transport, incorporating electron spin effects and contributions stemming from the nuclear vibrations. Within this result, we critically revise a master equation approach aiming to explain the origin of CISS effects observed in photosynthetic complexes. Taken together, these contributions offer fresh insights and original results on the interplay between driving fields and dissipation, relaxation phenomena, and electronic spin transport in the presence of incoherent dynamics. More broadly, these results provide new theoretical tools with several potential applications in quantum technologies, from modeling of control pulses in noisy environments to quantum reservoir engineering, and contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of quantum effects in biological systems.
We derive and discuss three different parametrizations of the generator of a dynamical semigroup which describes the Markovian relaxation of a spin j under the influence of isotropic surroundings. The relevant parametrizations that we consider are the strengths of the polarities of the interaction, the relaxation rates of the different multipoles and the transition probabilities per unit time among the Zeeman sublevels. The results are model independent and allow us to derive a set of relations and inequalities for the transition probabilities and for the relaxation rates whose validity is not bound to any specific assumption concerning the mechanisms which govern the relaxation.
Abstract This book treats the central physical concepts and mathematical techniques used to investigate the dynamics of open quantum systems. To provide a self-contained presentation, the text begins with a survey of classical probability theory and with an introduction to the foundations of quantum mechanics, with particular emphasis on its statistical interpretation and on the formulation of generalized measurement theory through quantum operations and effects. The fundamentals of density matrix theory, quantum Markov processes, and completely positive dynamical semigroups are developed. The most important master equations used in quantum optics and condensed matter theory are derived and applied to the study of many examples. Special attention is paid to the Markovian and non-Markovian theory of environment induced decoherence, its role in the dynamical description of the measurement process, and to the experimental observation of decohering electromagnetic field states. The book includes the modern formulation of open quantum systems in terms of stochastic processes in Hilbert space. Stochastic wave function methods and Monte Carlo algorithms are designed and applied to important examples from quantum optics and atomic physics. The fundamentals of the treatment of non-Markovian quantum processes in open systems are developed on the basis of various mathematical techniques, such as projection superoperator methods and influence functional techniques. In addition, the book expounds the relativistic theory of quantum measurements and the density matrix theory of relativistic quantum electrodynamics.
We present a general master equation, correct to second order in the system-environment coupling strength, that takes into account the initial system-environment correlations. We assume that the system and its environment are in a joint thermal equilibrium state, and thereafter, a unitary operation is performed to prepare the desired initial system state, with the system Hamiltonian possibly changing thereafter as well. We show that the effect of the initial correlations shows up in the second-order master equation as an additional term, similar in form to the usual second-order term describing relaxation and decoherence in quantum systems. We apply this master equation to a generalization of the paradigmatic spin-boson model, namely, a collection of two-level systems interacting with a common environment of harmonic oscillators, as well as a collection of two-level systems interacting with a common spin environment. We demonstrate that, in general, the initial system-environment correlations need to be accounted for in order to accurately obtain the system dynamics.
Abstract This chapter introduces the fundamentals of the description of the quantum dynamics of open systems in terms of quantum master equations, together with its most important applications. Special emphasis is laid on the theory of completely positive quantum dynamical semigroups, which leads to the concept of a quantum Markov process. It discusses the relaxation to equilibrium and the multi-time structure of quantum Markov processes, as well as their irreversible nature which is characterized by an appropriate entropy functional. Microscopic derivations for various quantum master equations are presented, such as the quantum optical master equation and the master equation for quantum Brownian motion. As a further application, the master equation describing continuous measurements is derived and used to study the quantum Zeno effect. The chapter also contains a treatment of non-linear, mean field quantum master equations together with applications to laser theory and super-radiance.
A central aim of physics is to describe the dynamics of physical sys-tems. Schrödinger’s equation does this for isolated quantum systems. Describing the time evolution of a quantum system that interacts with its environment, in its most general form, has proved to be difficult because the dynamics is dependent on the state of the environment and the corre-lations with it. For discrete processes, such as quantum gates or chemical reactions, quantum process tomography provides the complete descrip-tion of the dynamics, provided that the initial states of the system and the environment are independent of each other. However, many physical systems are correlated with the environment at the beginning of the ex-periment. Here, we give a prescription of quantum process tomography that yields the complete description of the dynamics of the system even when the initial correlations are present. Surprisingly, our method also gives quantitative expressions for the initial correlation. There is a rich history to the studies of decoherence of quantum systems due to the interactions with the surrounding degrees of freedom. When the dynamics of the system (S) is Markovian it can be described by a master equation [1, 2, 3]. Nowadays many researchers are interested in systems that are non-Markovian, as there is mounting evidence that some natural systems of importance may be non-Markovian [4] and such features may allow to manipulate and control quantum systems in desired ways. There is also a great deal of interest in systems that are initially correlated with their environments (E) because non-Markovianity and initial system-environment (SE) correlations are intimately related [5, 6, 7]. 1 ar