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Note on Functional Derivation of Master Equations

Hans-Thomas Elze

Published Apr 22, 1998• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Master equations describe the quantum dynamics of open systems interacting with an environment. They play an increasingly important role in understanding the emergence of semiclassical behavior and the generation of entropy, both being related to quantum decoherence. Presently we derive the exact master equation for a homogeneous scalar Higgs or inflaton like field coupled to an environment field represented by an infinite set of harmonic oscillators. Our aim is to demonstrate a derivation directly from the path integral representation of the density matrix propagator. Applications and generalizations of this result are discussed.

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arXiv:1607.01906•Jul 7, 2016•1 citation
Master equations describe the quantum dynamics of open systems interacting with an environment. They play an increasingly important role in understanding the emergence of semiclassical behavior and the generation of entropy, both being related to quantum decoherence. Presently we derive the exact master equation for a homogeneous scalar Higgs or inflaton like field coupled to an environment field represented by an infinite set of harmonic oscillators. Our aim is to demonstrate a derivation directly from the path integral representation of the density matrix propagator. Applications and generalizations of this result are discussed.
Master equations describe the quantum dynamics of open systems interacting with an environment. They play an increasingly important role in understanding the emergence of semiclassical behavior and the generation of entropy, both being related to quantum decoherence. Presently we derive the exact master equation for a homogeneous scalar Higgs or inflaton like field coupled to an environment field. It is represented here by an infinite set of harmonic oscillators with a given spectral density. Our nonperturbative result follows directly from the path integral representation of the density matrix propagator. Applications and generalizations are discussed.
Quantum decoherence is a proposed mechanism for the emergence of classical physics from the quantum mechanics. It has been developed extensively in recent years, but is sufficiently technically complicated to discourage widespread understanding. In this paper we provide a gentle introduction to quantum decoherence. We introduce state operators and their density matrix representations to describe composite systems, such as an experiment and its environment. We illustrate how the loss of information about a subsystem can cause a quantum system to appear classical. We first analyze a discrete example of phase randomization, then a Bell state, and finally a continuous system. In the final case we provide an accessible derivation of a major early result of decoherence theory, the master equation of quantum Brownian motion. We conclude by applying the master equation to the decoherence of a simple harmonic oscillator, with results reminiscent of our earlier discrete examples.
Density matrices are powerful mathematical tools for the description of closed and open quantum systems. Recently, methods for the direct computation of density matrix elements in scalar quantum field theory were developed based on thermo field dynamics (TFD) and the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. In this article, we provide a more detailed discussion of these methods and derive expressions for density matrix elements of closed and open systems. At first, we look at closed systems by discussing general solutions to the Schrödinger-like form of the quantum Liouville equations in TFD, showing that the dynamical map is indeed divisible, deriving a path integral-based expression for the density matrix elements in Fock space, and explaining why perturbation theory enables us to use the last even in situations where all initial states in Fock space are occupied. Subsequently, we discuss open systems in the same manner after tracing out environmental degrees of freedom from the solutions for closed systems. We find that, even in a general basis, the dynamical map is not divisible, which renders the dynamics of open systems non-Markovian. Finally, we show how the resulting expressions for open systems can be used to obtain quantum master equations, and comment on the artificiality of time integrals over density matrices that usually appear in many other master equations in the literature but are absent in ours.
A systematic procedure for deriving the master equation of a dissipative system is reported in the framework of stochastic description. For the Caldeira-Leggett model of the harmonic-oscillator bath, a detailed and elementary derivation of the bath-induced stochastic field is presented. The dynamics of the system is thereby fully described by a stochastic differential equation, and the desired master equation would be acquired with statistical averaging. It is shown that the existence of a closed-form master equation depends on the specificity of the system as well as the feature of the dissipation characterized by the spectral density function. For a dissipative harmonic oscillator it is observed that the correlation between the stochastic field due to the bath and the system can be decoupled, and the master equation naturally results. Such an equation possesses the Lindblad form in which time-dependent coefficients are determined by a set of integral equations. It is proved that the obtained master equation is equivalent to the well-known Hu-Paz-Zhang equation based on the path-integral technique. The procedure is also used to obtain the master equation of a dissipative harmonic oscillator in time-dependent fields.
This paper presents an application of white noise functional approach to derive the quantum propagator and the evolution of the reduced density matrix for an open quantum system consisting of coupled harmonic oscillators which are coupled to a bath consisting of a multimode harmonic oscillator. It is shown that the full quantum propagator is a product of three individual propagators. These propagators were obtained after two successive transformations of the coordinates for the system, and the coordinates for the coupling between the bath and one of the two harmonic oscillators in the system. The obtained propagator is then used to derive the time evolution equation for the density matrix describing the system. The method used to derive the propagator of the open quantum system considered in this paper shows promise for analyzing open quantum systems, due to its ease of use and mathematical rigor.