Quantum evolution with a large number of negative decoherence rates

Abstract

Non-Markovian effects in quantum evolution appear when the system is strongly coupled to the environment and interacts with it for long periods of time. To include memory effects in the master equations, one usually incorporates time-local generators or memory kernels. However, it turns out that non-Markovian evolution with eternally negative decoherence rates arises from a simple mixture of Markovian semigroups. Moreover, one can have as many as $(d-1{)}^2$ always negative rates out of $d^2-1$ total, and the quantum evolution is still legitimate.