TY - JOUR
T1 - Exact master equation and general non-Markovian dynamics in open quantum systems
AU - Zhang, Wei Min
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank my former and current students and Postdocs who have made the important contributions to the development of this exact master equation theory for open quantum systems, namely Matisse W.Y. Tu, J. Jin, C.U. Lei, P.Y. Yang, P.Y. Lo, J.H. An, H.T. Tan, H.N. Xiong, H.L. Lam, and Y.W. Huang. I would also like to thank my collaborators for the fruitful discussions in the related topics in the past years, namely Y.J. Yan, S. Gurvitz, A. Aharony, O. Entin-Wohlman, and F. Nori. This work is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China under the contract No. MOST 105-2112-M-006-008-MY3.
PY - 2019/3/1
Y1 - 2019/3/1
N2 - Investigations of quantum and mesoscopic thermodynamics force one to answer two fundamental questions associated with the foundations of statistical mechanics: (i) how does macroscopic irreversibility emerge from microscopic reversibility? (ii) how does the system relax in general to thermal equilibrium with its environment? The answers to these questions rely on a deep understanding of nonequilibrium decoherence dynamics of systems interacting with their environments. Decoherence is also a main concern in developing quantum information technology. In the past two decades, many theoretical and experimental investigations have devoted to this topic, most of these investigations take the Markov (memory-less) approximation. These investigations have provided a partial understanding to several fundamental issues, such as quantum measurement and the quantum-to-classical transition, etc. However, experimental implementations of nanoscale solid-state quantum information processing makes strong non-Markovian memory effects unavoidable, thus rendering their study a pressing and vital issue. Through the rigorous derivation of the exact master equation and a systematical exploration of various non-Markovian processes for a large class of open quantum systems, we find that decoherence manifests unexpected complexities. We demonstrate these general non-Markovian dynamics manifested in different open quantum systems.
AB - Investigations of quantum and mesoscopic thermodynamics force one to answer two fundamental questions associated with the foundations of statistical mechanics: (i) how does macroscopic irreversibility emerge from microscopic reversibility? (ii) how does the system relax in general to thermal equilibrium with its environment? The answers to these questions rely on a deep understanding of nonequilibrium decoherence dynamics of systems interacting with their environments. Decoherence is also a main concern in developing quantum information technology. In the past two decades, many theoretical and experimental investigations have devoted to this topic, most of these investigations take the Markov (memory-less) approximation. These investigations have provided a partial understanding to several fundamental issues, such as quantum measurement and the quantum-to-classical transition, etc. However, experimental implementations of nanoscale solid-state quantum information processing makes strong non-Markovian memory effects unavoidable, thus rendering their study a pressing and vital issue. Through the rigorous derivation of the exact master equation and a systematical exploration of various non-Markovian processes for a large class of open quantum systems, we find that decoherence manifests unexpected complexities. We demonstrate these general non-Markovian dynamics manifested in different open quantum systems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85060192634&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85060192634&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1140/epjst/e2018-800047-4
DO - 10.1140/epjst/e2018-800047-4
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85060192634
VL - 227
SP - 1849
EP - 1867
JO - European Physical Journal: Special Topics
JF - European Physical Journal: Special Topics
SN - 1951-6355
IS - 15-16
ER -