On the decay law for unstable open systems

W. Garczyński

Maurice M. Lévy

M. I. Shirokov

F. Benatti, Roberto Floreanini B

We use (nonconservative) dynamical semigroups to investigate the decay law of a quantum unstable system weakly coupled with a large environment. We find that the deviations from the classical exponential law are small and can be safely ignored in any actual experiment.

Mathieu Beau, Jukka Kiukas, I. L. Egusquiza +1 more

A system prepared in an unstable quantum state generally decays following an exponential law, as environmental decoherence is expected to prevent the decay products from recombining to reconstruct the initial state. Here we show the existence of deviations from exponential decay in open quantum systems under very general conditions. Our results are illustrated with the exact dynamics under quantum Brownian motion and suggest an explanation of recent experimental observations.