Timescales in quantum open systems

dynamics of time correlation functions and stochastic quantum trajectory methods in non-markovian systems

Daniel Alonso

Inês de Vega

pp. 277-301

in: Gonzalo Muga, Andreas Ruschhaupt, Adolfo del Campo (eds), Time in quantum mechanics II, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

The dynamics of a system in interaction with another system, the later considered as a reservoir, is studied in many different domains in physics. This approach is useful not only to address fundamental questions like quantum decoherence decoherence and the measurement problem [1] but also to deal with practical and theoretical problems appearing in the emerging fields of nanotechnology nanotechnology [2, 3] and quantum computing quantum computing as well as in systems of ultracold atoms [7]. In many of these cases, the basic approximation is the Markov assumption in which there is a clear separation of the typical timescales associated with the system and the reservoir or environment. This separation of timescales, together with other assumptions like the weak coupling between the system and the reservoir, has been central in the development of several fields, in particular in quantum optics [8, 9]. However, in