Previously developed ``stochastic representation of deterministic interactions`` enables exact treatment of an open system without leaving its native phase space (Hilbert space) due to peculiar stochastic extension of the Liouville (von Neumann) equation for its statistical operator. Can one reformulate the theory in terms of stochastic ``Langevin equations'' for its variables? Here it is shown that in case of classical Hamiltonian underlying dynamics the answer is principally positive, and general explicit method of constructing such equations is described.
Previously developed stochastic representation of deterministic interactions enables exact treatment of an open system without leaving its native phase space (Hilbert space) due to peculiar stochastic extension of the Liouville (von Neumann) equation for its statistical operator. Can one reformulate the theory in terms of stochastic ``Langevin equations'' for its variables? Here it is shown that in case of classical Hamiltonian underlying dynamics the answer is principally positive, and general explicit method of constructing such equations is described.
Previous years researchers began to simulate open quantum system, taking into account the interaction between system and the environment. One approach to deal with this problem is to use the density matrix within the Liouville-von-Neumann formalism or the Markovian variant the Lindblad equations. Another way is to use a stochastic approach where a random force is added to the system. The benefit of the stochastic approach is to solve the dynamics of the system with less time and memory than the density matrix approaches. In this project we want to develop a stochastic approach that can deal with the stochastic wave functions approach. We did this on a 2-level system and found that it works well when comparing to a density matrix approach. Next, we tested a quantum particle connect to a bath of harmonic oscillators using the stochastic approach. We found that a friction term is necessary and applied it. Like in the classical Langevin equations the friction constant and the random force fluctuations are related by the fluctuation-dissipation constant. We showed that with friction the dynamics decays to an ensemble with energy of Egs+kBT. However, we also found here are problems. The system seems to absorb energy indefinitely if the temperature is higher than the zero point energy or if the system is a Morse oscillator. Thus more research is required to make this method work.
We first point out that nonrelativistic quantum mechanics formulated at imaginary time s = it can formally be recognized as the Fokker-Planck description of a classical Brownian motion, which occurs (in general) in a medium where particles are absorbed and emitted. We next offer a new formulation of quantum dynamics, which is basically the Langevin treatment of that Brownian motion. More explicitly, we derive a noise average representation of the transition probability W ( X", s"|X', s' ) in terms of the solutions to a Langevin equation with a Gaussian white noise. Upon analytic continuation back to real time W ( X", s"|X', s' ) becomes the propagator of the original Schrödinger equation, namely we have ⟨ X", t"|X', t' ⟩ = W ( X", it"|X', it' ). The main advantage of this approach is to permit a systematic application to quantum-dynamical problems of the mathematical techniques developed in the theory of classical stochastic processes, even when vector potentials and/or time-dependent potentials are present.
The stochastic representation of quantum mechanics is used to give a purely stochastic treatment of the quantum Langevin equation. A general coupling involving positions and velocities of the particle and harmonic modes, with arbitrary dependence on the particle's position, is dealt with. Summing over the modes in the path integral and using stochastic integrals, the author obtains explicitly the reduced measure, that is, the stochastic process representing the time evolution of the small system in the presence of noise. Contact is made with the operatorial representation, and a relation is established between the correlations of the noise in both representations. A general condition on the coupling constants is given for recovering time locality in the continuum limit, and the effects of renormalisation are re-analysed within this purely stochastic approach.
We explore whether quantum field theory can be understood as the statistical mechanics of a time-reversal-invariant stochastic generalization of Hamiltonian dynamics. The motivation for this project, started with this paper, is to assign sharp values to all observables and thereby avoid the quantum measurement problem. In classical mechanics, motion is deterministic and corresponds to an evolution of the phase space probability density according to Liouville's equation that is governed by first derivatives of the Hamiltonian in phase space. We derive a generalization of the Liouville equation with natural constraints -- namely, reduction to classical Hamiltonian dynamics as the stochasticity parameter ℏ↦0, Fokker-Planck form for the probability density evolution, local Hamiltonian dependence, time-reversal invariance, energy conservation, and minimality -- which turns out to be a Fokker-Planck equation with a generalized diffusion matrix that is symmetric, traceless, and constructed from the Hessian of the Hamiltonian. We then show that the Schrödinger equation in the coherent-state phase-space formulation of certain bosonic QFTs has precisely this form, with the Husimi function playing the role of the phase space probability density. The question to what extent this equation can be interpreted in terms of objective stochastic field theories is discussed in a companion paper.
Phase-space methods are powerful tools for the treatment of Markovian open quantum systems: they map the reduced dynamics of a system S, in interaction with an environment E, exactly onto Langevin equations for c-number stochastic variables, as opposed to Heisenberg-Langevin equations for operators. Langevin equations provide analytical insight in key regimes and excel at handling strong nonlinearities and couplings, where other methods often falter. Extending phase-space methods to non-Markovian dynamics, however, has remained a long-standing challenge. Here we address this gap by applying phase-space representations to the full S+E system; integrating out the environmental degrees of freedom then yields a general Langevin framework for S that incorporates both deterministic and stochastic contributions from E. Normally ordered representations, such as the Glauber-Sudarshan P representation and its positive variant due to Drummond and Gardiner, lead to Langevin equations in which (i) non-Markovian effects emerge exclusively in the deterministic terms, via a memory kernel, and (ii) noise contributions vanish when E is initially in the vacuum state. To demonstrate the power of this framework, we address the paradigmatic problem of delayed coherent feedback, in which the system is driven by its own past state, and study its impact on the laser linewidth: we recover the narrowing observed well above threshold and predict an enhanced narrowing just above it. Crucially, the number of stochastic variables scales linearly with the system size, making the framework suitable for problems ranging from a few degrees of freedom to genuinely many-body systems. This opens the way to the systematic study of non-Markovian driven-dissipative quantum systems using the same analytical and numerical tools that have long made phase-space methods so successful in the Markovian regime.
A unified framework of stochastic differential equations for quantum systems, formulated within Non-Equilibrium Thermo Field Dynamics (NETFD), is applied to a model of non-linear damped oscillator. The quantum stochastic Liouville equation and the quantum Langevin equations (both of Ito and Stratonovich type), which are consistent with the corresponding master equation, are written down explicitly in the case of a non-conventional treatment. This solves Kubo's third problem: how one can obtain the correlations of random force operators for the Langevin equation compatible with the master equation derived by the non-conventional treatment of the damping theory.