Quantum dissipation and decay in a medium

Physical Review A - Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics

Volumn 57, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 798-805

  Joichi, I ^a   Matsumoto, Sh ^a   Yoshimura, M ^a  

^a TOHOKU UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001528017     PISSN: 10502947     EISSN: 10941622     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.57.798     Document Type: Article

References (26)

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10. For a recent review from the path-integral point, see H. Grabert, P. Schramm, and G.-L. Ingold, Phys. Rep. 168, 115 (1988). We became aware of this review recently. As indicated below, this review contains important results by Grabert and his collaborators that have much to do with our work. There are several differences, however. They were primarily interested in correlated initial states, so their results are generally complicated and lack the simplicity of our results.PRPLCM
11. A. J. Leggett, Phys. Rev. B 30, 1208 (1984). This paper derives a Euclidean effective potential applicable to the tunneling problem at zero temperature. Our present work may be considered a generalization of this work to finite temperatures for the harmonic environment. However, the Euclidean technique used there makes it possible to analyze only on-shell quantities such as the decay rate, and clearly the method has many limitations.PRBMDO
12. G. W. Ford, J. T. Lewis, and R. F. O’Connell, Phys. Rev. A 37, 4419 (1988). This work writes down the quantum Langevin equation corresponding to our model. However, these authors do not discuss solutions of this model, unlike our present work.PLRAAN
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18. The master equation in our model does not belong to Lindblad’s form, given by G. Lindblad, Commun. Math. Phys. 48, 119 (1976). Lindblad’s form is only a condition sufficient to guarantee the positivity of the density matrix. As we stated, but did not prove in the present work, our bilinear model, correctly treated without the local approximation, fulfills the positivity.CMPHAY
19. The contour distortion used here is the one in M.L. Goldberger and K.M. Watson, Collision Theory (John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1964), Chap. 8, in which a detailed account of the decay of prepared states in quantum mechanics is given.
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