Quantum Lunch: Describing non-Markovian open quantum systems

Speaker: Jake Iles-Smith, DTU.

Abstract: Quantum systems are invariably open, evolving under surrounding influences rather than in isolation. Standard open quantum system methods eliminate all information on the environmental state and system-environment correlations to yield a tractable description of the system dynamics. However, there are numerous physical systems where this approach is invalid, and system-environment correlations directly influence the dynamical and steady state properties of a system. In this talk I shall present an intuitive method, known as the reaction coordinate model, for describing such non-Markovian quantum systems. Not only does this approach accurately capture the dynamical behaviour of the system, it also allows the system-environment correlations to be quantified — information that is inaccessible to standard open systems approaches.