A Lindbladian From Feynman-Vernon

Abstract

The effective dynamics of a system interacting with a bath or environment is presented in two ways, (1) the (LGKS) replacement of the von Neuman equation for the density matrix and (2) the Feynman-Vernon path-integral derivation, by integrating out the bath degree of freedom, to arrive at a system's density matrix. In this paper, I connect the two methods by deriving a Lindbladian in a mechanical example, a point particle interacting with a bath of harmonic oscillators, previously considered by Feynman and Vernon (FV) and expounded on later by Caldeira and Leggett (CL). But the (FV)/(CL) results only in non-Markov effect, memory terms from the bath interaction. To derive a Lindbladian, I changed the interaction term they considered to take into account the point particle interacting with the bath harmonic oscillators to something more realistic. From the resulting path-integral expression of the system's propagator for the density matrix, the Lindbladian and non-Markov terms are read for this simple problem. I also point out the causes of these terms, the Markov Lindbladian from the very local interaction of the point particle with the classical solutions of the harmonic oscillator and the non-Markov term from the global interaction of the point particle with the fluctuation of the classical solutions.