Open quantum walks (OQWs) are exclusively driven by dissipation and are formulated as completely positive trace-preserving (CPTP) maps on underlying graphs. The microscopic derivation of discrete and continuous-in-time OQWs is presented. It is assumed that connected nodes are weakly interacting via a common bath. The resulting reduced master equation of the quantum walker on the lattice is in the generalized master equation form. The time discretization of the generalized master equation leads to the OQW formalism. The explicit form of the transition operators establishes a connection between dynamical properties of the OQWs and thermodynamical characteristics of the environment. The derivation is demonstrated for the examples of the OQW on a circle of nodes and on a finite chain of nodes. For both examples, a transition between diffusive and ballistic quantum trajectories is observed and found to be related to the temperature of the bath.
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
n-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.