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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
I will describe some methods that have been recently developed to study the dynamics of open quantum systems. The systems considered fall into two categories: systems close to equilibrium and systems far from it. In the first case, a small system is in contact with a single macroscopic reservoir, in the second case a small system interacts with several reservoirs characterized by different macroscopic parameters (temperature, chemical potential...). The goal of this talk is to explain, in a non-technical way, how one naturally arrives at a description of the dynamics by a so-called Liouville operator (positive temperature Hamiltonian), how the dynamical properties are related to the spectrum of this operator, and how one can analyze the spectrum. The advantage of this approach is that no master-equation approximations or small coupling-limit approximations are needed. Applications include: the description of the process of the return to equilibrium, the calculation of non-equilibrium stationary states, energy and matter fluxes and entropy production rates.
Host: Gennady Berman