Role of correlations in the thermalization of quantum systems



: Smirne A, Laine EM, Breuer HP, Piilo J, Vacchini B

Publisher: IOP PUBLISHING LTD

: 2012

: New Journal of Physics

: NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS

: NEW J PHYS

: ARTN 113034

: 14

: 17

: 1367-2630

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/14/11/113034

: https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.3700


We investigate the equilibration and thermalization properties of quantum systems interacting with a finite-dimensional environment. By exploiting the concept of time-averaged states, we introduce a completely positive map which allows us to describe in a quantitative way the dependence of the equilibrium state on the initial condition. Our results show that the thermalization of quantum systems is favored if the dynamics induces small system-environment correlations, as well as small changes in the environment, as measured by the trace distance.



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