2011/10/31 by J. Salmilehto, Paolo Solinas, P. Solinas +2 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.85.032110
published as Phys. Rev. A 85, 032110 (2012) · 5 pages, final version
openalex publication_date 2012/03/07 · arxiv created 2012/03/08 · arxiv updated 2012/03/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We derive a fundamental conservation law of operator current for master equations describing reduced quantum systems. If this law is broken, the temporal integral of the current operator of an arbitrary system observable does not yield in general the change of that observable in the evolution. We study Lindblad-type master equations as examples and prove that the application of the secular approximation during their derivation results in a violation of the conservation law. We show that generally any violation of the law leads to artificial corrections to the complete quantum dynamics, thus questioning the accuracy of the particular master equation.