A weak-coupling master equation for arbitrary initial conditions

Abstract

The structure of the initial system-environment state is fundamental to determining the nature and characteristics of the evolution of such an open quantum system. The usual assumption is to consider that the initial system-environment state is separable. Here, we go beyond this simple case and derive the evolution equations, up to second order in a weak-coupling expansion, that describe the evolution of the reduced density matrix of the system for any arbitrary system-environment initial state. The structure of these equations allows us to determine the initial conditions for which a Lindblad form can be recovered once applying the Markov and secular approximations.

5 pages and 2 figures in main text, 7 pages and 2 figures in supplementary material

References in corpus (15)

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Initial System-Environment Correlations via the Transfer Tensor Method
• Improving the estimation of environment parameters via initial probe-environment correlations
• Effect of initial system-environment correlations with spin environments
• Geometric phase corrected by initial system-environment correlations
• Prethermalization of quantum systems interacting with non-equilibrium environments
• Time evolution of quantum correlations in presence of state dependent bath
• Adapted projection operator technique for the treatment of initial correlations
• A master equation incorporating the system-environment correlations present in the joint equilibrium state