The phenomenological dissipation of the Bloch equations is re-examined in the context of completely positive maps. Such maps occur if the dissipation arises from a reduction of a unitary evolution of a system coupled to a reservoir. In such a case the reduced dynamics for the system alone will always yield completely positive maps of the density operator. We show that, for Markovian Bloch maps, the requirement of complete positivity imposes some Bloch inequalities on the phenomenological damping constants. For non-Markovian Bloch maps some kind of Bloch inequalities involving eigenvalues of the damping basis can be established as well. As an illustration of these general properties we use the depolarizing channel with white and coloured stochastic noise.
The phenomenological dissipation of the Bloch equations is re-examined in the context of completely positive maps. Such maps occur if the dissipation arises from a reduction of a unitary evolution of a system coupled to a reservoir. In such a case the reduced dynamics for the system alone will always yield completely positive maps of the density operator. We show that, for Markovian Bloch maps, the requirement of complete positivity imposes some Bloch inequalities on the phenomenological damping constants. For non-Markovian Bloch maps some kind of Bloch inequalities involving eigenvalues of the damping basis can be established as well. As an illustration of these general properties we use the depolarizing channel with white and coloured stochastic noise.
The prevailing description for dissipative quantum dynamics is given by the Lindblad form of a Markovian master equation, used under the assumption that memory effects are negligible. However, in certain physical situations, the master equation is essentially of a non-Markovian nature. In this paper we examine master equations that possess a memory kernel, leading to a replacement of white noise by colored noise. The conditions under which this leads to a completely positive, trace-preserving map are discussed for an exponential memory kernel.
Starting from the Schrödinger equation for a system and a reservoir, we construct a quantum dynamical map that describes reduced dynamics. We work with an arbitrary initial state for the system and reservoir, and thus refrain from performing any factorizations. The map is found to be nonlinear, not completely positive, and not unique. To investigate the physical implications, the Bloch equations are constructed. If the freedom the new map offers us is fully exploited, then the classic inequality γ ⊥ ⩾γ ∥ /2 for the damping coefficients must be replaced by a weaker condition.
In the simplest approximation, the reduced dynamics of a quantum system
S interacting with its environment
E is considered to be given by a completely positive map. But, in general, this is not the case. In fact, the reduced dynamics of the system in not even linear, in general. Whether the reduced dynamics is linear or not is determined by two factors: the set of possible initial states of the system-environment $\mathcal{S}=\left\lbrace ρ_{SE} \right\rbrace $, and the joint system-environment unitary evolution
U. When
U is factorisable as
U=US⊗UE, then we can choose
S=D, where
D is the set of all system-environment density operators. In other words, when
U is factorisable, the reduced dynamics of the system
S is linear (in fact unitary) for arbitrary initial state of the system-environment
ρSE. We show that this result cannot be generalized to any non-factorisable
U: For any non-factorisable unitary evolution of the whole system-environment
U, the set
S must be chosen as a proper subset of
D to achieve linear reduced dynamics. As a byproduct, considering a convex set of possible initial states of the system-environment
S such that
TrE S=TrE D, we show that when the reduced dynamics of the system, for one system-environment unitary evolution
U1, is positive, but not completely positive, this implies that reduced dynamics is not linear for another
U2.
We propose an effective Hamiltonian approach to investigate decoherence of a quantum system in a non-Markovian reservoir, naturally imposing the complete positivity on the reduced dynamics of the system. The formalism is based on the notion of an effective reservoir, i.e., certain collective degrees of freedom in the reservoir that are responsible for the decoherence. As examples for completely positive decoherence, we present three typical decoherence processes for a qubit such as dephasing, depolarizing, and amplitude damping. The effects of the non-Markovian decoherence are compared to the Markovian decoherence.