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A Quantum Evolution Realizing Simple Brownian Motion

Kurt A. Jacobs

Published Jul 26, 2008• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The standard Brownian motion master equation, used to describe thermal damping, is not completely positive, and does not admit a Monte Carlo method, important in numerical simulations. To eliminate both these problems one must add a term that generates additional position diffusion. He we show that one can obtain a completely positive simple quantum Brownian motion, efficiently solvable, without any extra diffusion. This is achieved by using a stochastic Schroedinger equation (SSE), closely analogous to Langevin's equation, that has no equivalent Markovian master equation. Considering a specific example, we show that this SSE is sensitive to nonlinearities in situations in which the master equation is not, and may therefore be a better model of damping for nonlinear systems.

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The standard Brownian motion master equation, used to describe thermal damping, is not completely positive, and does not admit a Monte Carlo method, important in numerical simulations. To eliminate both these problems one must add a term that generates additional position diffusion. He we show that one can obtain a completely positive simple quantum Brownian motion, efficiently solvable, without any extra diffusion. This is achieved by using a stochastic Schroedinger equation (SSE), closely analogous to Langevin's equation, that has no equivalent Markovian master equation. Considering a specific example, we show that this SSE is sensitive to nonlinearities in situations in which the master equation is not, and may therefore be a better model of damping for nonlinear systems.
The "standard" Brownian motion master equation, used to describe thermal damping, is not completely positive, and does not admit a Monte Carlo method, important in numerical simulations. To eliminate both these problems one must add a term that generates additional position diffusion. He we show that one can obtain a completely positive simple quantum Brownian motion, efficiently solvable, without any extra diffusion. This is achieved by using a stochastic Schrödinger equation (SSE), closely analogous to Langevin's equation, that has no equivalent Markovian master equation. Considering a specific example, we show that this SSE is sensitive to nonlinearities in situations in which the master equation is not, and may therefore be a better model of damping for nonlinear systems.
We give a new description of quantum Brownian motion in terms of stochastic pure states. The corresponding path integral propagator allows us to establish a direct connection to the classical Langevin equation, in the Schrodinger picture. We show that in the quantum domain, one is naturally led to consider two stochastic processes driving the Brownian dynamics, one of them representing thermal fluctuations, as in the classical case. The second process reflects growing entanglement between the Brownian particle and its environment, and is therefore a truly quantum noise process. Technically, our result rests on the representation of the full propagator of the Brownian particle and its environment in a coherent state basis. For open system dynamics that may be described by a master equation, such stochastic schemes have already been proven to be efficient Monte Carlo methods. Here, we give a new stochastic scheme that covers low temperatures and strong friction, the latter limit being the case Einstein originally investigated.
A nonlinear stochastic Schr\"odinger equation for pure states describing non-Markovian diffusion of quantum trajectories and compatible with non-Markovian master equations is presented. This provides an unraveling of the evolution of any quantum system coupled to a finite or infinite number of harmonic oscillators without any approximation. Its power is illustrated by several examples, including measurementlike situations, dissipation, and quantum Brownian motion. Some examples treat this environment phenomenologically as an infinite reservoir with fluctuations of arbitrary correlation. In other examples the environment consists of a finite number of oscillators. In such a quasiperiodic case we see the reversible decay of a macroscopic quantum-superposition (``Schr\"odinger cat''). Finally, our description of open systems is compatible with different positions of the ``Heisenberg cut'' between system and environment.
We analyze the microscopic model of quantum Brownian motion, describing a Brownian particle interacting with a bosonic bath through a coupling which is linear in the creation and annihilation operators of the bath, but may be a nonlinear function of the position of the particle. Physically, this corresponds to a configuration in which damping and diffusion are spatially inhomogeneous. We derive systematically the quantum master equation for the Brownian particle in the Born-Markov approximation and we discuss the appearance of additional terms, for various polynomials forms of the coupling. We discuss the cases of linear and quadratic coupling in great detail and we derive, using Wigner function techniques, the stationary solutions of the master equation for a Brownian particle in a harmonic trapping potential. We predict quite generally Gaussian stationary states, and we compute the aspect ratio and the spread of the distributions. In particular, we find that these solutions may be squeezed (superlocalized) with respect to the position of the Brownian particle. We analyze various restrictions to the validity of our theory posed by non-Markovian effects and by the Heisenberg principle. We further study the dynamical stability of the system, by applying a Gaussian approximation to the time-dependent Wigner function, and we compute the decoherence rates of coherent quantum superpositions in position space. Finally, we propose a possible experimental realization of the physics discussed here, by considering an impurity particle embedded in a degenerate quantum gas.
Non-Markovian master equations describe general open quantum systems when no approximation is made. We provide the exact closed master equation for the class of Gaussian, completely positive, trace preserving, non-Markovian dynamics. This very general result allows us to investigate a vast variety of physical systems. We show that the master equation for non-Markovian quantum Brownian motion is a particular case of our general result. Furthermore, we derive the master equation unraveled by a non-Markovian, dissipative stochastic Schrödinger equation, paving the way for the analysis of dissipative non-Markovian collapse models.
Open Quantum Brownian Motion (OQBM) was introduced as a scaling limit of discrete-time open quantum walks. This limit defines a new class of quantum Brownian motion, which incorporates both the external and internal degrees of freedom of the Brownian particle. We consider a weakly driven Brownian particle confined in a harmonic potential and dissipatively coupled to a thermal bath. Applying the rotating wave approximation (RWA) to the system-bath interaction Hamiltonian, we derive a completely positive Born-Markov master equation for the reduced dynamics. We express the resulting master equation in the coordinate representation and, utilizing the adiabatic elimination of fast variables, derive a completely positive hybrid quantum-classical master equation that defines OQBM. We illustrate the resulting dynamics using examples of initial Gaussian and non-Gaussian distributions of the OQBM walker. Both examples reveal the emergence of Gaussian distributions in the limiting behavior of the OQBM dynamics, which closely matches that of the standard OQBM. With the help of the obtained OQBM master equation, we derive the equations for the nnn-th moments and the cumulants of the position distribution of the open Brownian walker. We subsequently solve these equations numerically for Gaussian initial distributions across various parameter regimes. Notably, we find that the third-order cumulant is nonzero, indicating that the dynamics' intrinsic generator is non-Gaussian.