Lieb-Robinson bounds for irreversible dynamics via adaptive Dyson expansion

Abstract

In this note, we study a broad class of time-dependent and irreversible dynamics for quantum spin systems in both finite and infinite volume. We develop a simple and flexible strategy for expanding commutators of the form $[A,{\tau }_{s,t}B]$ in terms of self-avoiding paths of sets, where $A$ and $B$ are local operators and ${\tau }_{s,t}$ is the Heisenberg time evolution. This adaptive Dyson expansion requires no backwards time evolution and is thus also applicable to irreversible dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss how such an expansion directly implies Lieb-Robinson bounds. A central feature of our result is that the obtained Lieb-Robinson bounds are independent of any Hamiltonian and dissipative on-site terms of the generator.