1. First Lecture: Basics 1.1 Physical Derivation of the Master Equation 1.2 Some Simple Implications 1.3 Steady State 1.4 Action to the Left 2. Second Lecture: Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors of L 2.1 A Simple Case First 2.2 The General Case 3 Third Lecture: Completeness of the Damping Bases 3.1 Phase Space Functions 3.2 Completeness of the Eigenvectors of L 3.3 Positivity Conservation 3.4 Lindblad Form of Liouville Operators 4 Fourth Lecture: Quantum-Optical Applications 4.1 Periodically Driven Damped Oscillator 4.2 Conditional and Unconditional Evolution 4.3 Physical Signicance of Statistical Operators 5 Fifth Lecture: Statistics of Detected Atoms 5.1 Correlation Functions 5.2 Waiting Time Statistics 5.3 Counting Statistics