Reduced Dynamics Need Not Be Completely Positive
- 22 August 1994
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 73 (8) , 1060-1062
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.73.1060
Abstract
The reduced dynamics of a quantum system in contact with a reservoir is generally thought to be "completely positive"; this is certainly true if product initial conditions are used to define the dynamics. We show that with correlated initial conditions it need not be so. In this case the dynamics can properly be defined only on a subset of initial system states; extension, by linearity, to all possible initial states is trivially possible, but the extension may not be physically realizable and may not even be positive, let alone completely positive.Keywords
This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- Non-Markovian population and phase relaxation and absorption lineshape for a two-level system strongly coupled to a harmonic quantum bathPhysica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1993
- Memory effects in the relaxation of quantum open systemsThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1992
- T 2 can be greater than 2T1 even at finite temperatureThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1991
- Quantum-mechanical derivation of the Bloch equations: Beyond the weak-coupling limitThe Journal of Chemical Physics, 1991
- Theory of spin-relaxation processesPhysica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1989
- Relaxation properties of two-level systems in condensed phasesPhysica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1989
- On the generators of quantum dynamical semigroupsCommunications in Mathematical Physics, 1976