2003/06/12 by Joshua Wilkie, Wilkie, Joshua, Murat Cetinbas +1
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0306089
17 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2003/06/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
A mean field argument is used to derive a master equation for systems simultaneously interacting with external fields and coupled environmental degrees of freedom. We prove that this master equation preserves positivity of the reduced density matrix. Solutions of the master equation are compared with exact solutions for a system consisting of three spins which is manipulated with a sequence of laser pulses while interacting with a spin-bath. Exact solutions appear to converge to the master equation result as the number of bath spins increases.