2004/10/05 by Ralph Gebauer, Roberto Car · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.160404
To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
arxiv created 2004/10/05 · openalex publication_date 2004/10/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We show that a dissipative current component is present in the dynamics generated by a Liouville-master equation, in addition to the usual component associated with Hamiltonian evolution. The dissipative component originates from coarse graining in time, implicit in a master equation, and needs to be included to preserve current continuity. We derive an explicit expression for the dissipative current in the context of the Markov approximation. Finally, we illustrate our approach with a simple numerical example, in which a quantum particle is coupled to a harmonic phonon bath and dissipation is described by the Pauli master equation.