Decoherence without dissipation
Subhashish Banerjee, Rupamanjari Ghosh
Abstract
We study open quantum systems where the coupling between the system and its environment is of a quantum nondmolition (QND) type. Such a system undergoes decoherence without dissipation of energy. We obtain the master equation for the evolution of such a system under the influence of a squeezed thermal bath. From the master equation it can be seen explicitly that the process involves decoherence without any dissipation. We work out the decoherence causing term in the high and zero temperature limits and show that they match with known results in the different temperature regimes for the case of a thermal bath. We also make a comparison between the quantum statistical properties of QND and non-QND (i.e., involving decoherence as well as dissipation) types of evolution.