Microscopic master equations have gained traction for the dissipative treatment of molecular spin and solid-state systems for quantum technologies. Single particle approximations are often invoked to treat these systems, which can lead to unphysical evolution when combined with master equation approaches. We present a mathematical constraint on the system-environment parameters to ensure that microscopically-derived Markovian master equations preserve fermionic,
N-representable statistics when applied to reduced systems. We demonstrate these constraints for the recently derived unified master equation and universal Lindblad equation, along with the Redfield master equation for cases when positivity issues are not present. For operators that break the constraint, we explore the addition of Pauli factors to recover
N-representability. This work promotes feasible applications of novel microscopic master equations for realistic chemical systems.
We use the mean-field approximation to simplify the master equation for sympathetic cooling of bosons. For the mean single-particle occupation numbers, this approach yields the same equations as the factorization assumption introduced in an early paper. The stationary or equilibrium solution of the resulting master equation for the one-body density matrix shows that the mean-field approximation breaks down whenever the fraction of condensate bosons exceeds 10% or so of the total. Using group-theoretical methods, we also solve the time-dependent master equation for the one-body density matrix. Given the time dependence of the mean single-particle occupation numbers, this solution is obtained by quadratures. It tends asymptotically towards the equilibrium solution.
Abstract We introduce a systematic approximation for an efficient evaluation of Born–Markov master equations for steady state transport studies in open quantum systems out of equilibrium: the energy resolved master equation approach. The master equation is formulated in the eigenbasis of the open quantum system and build successively by including eigenstates with increasing grandcanonical energies. In order to quantify convergence of the approximate scheme we introduce quality factors to check preservation of trace, positivity and hermiticity. Furthermore, we discuss different types of master equations that go beyond the commonly used secular approximation in order to resolve coherences between quasi-degenerate states. For the discussion of complete positivity we introduce a canonical Redfield–Bloch master equation and compare it to a previously derived master equations in Lindblad form with and without using the secular approximation. The approximate scheme is benchmarked for a six orbital quantum system which shows destructive quantum interference under the application of a bias voltage. The energy resolved master equation approach presented here makes quantum transport calculations in many-body quantum systems numerically accessible also beyond six orbitals with a full Hilbert space of the order of ∼106.