Open Quantum Systems II: The Markovian Approach

This volume is the second in a series of three volumes dedicated to the lecture notes of the summer school “Open Quantum Systems” which took place in the Institut Fourier in Grenoble, from June 16th to July 4th 2003. The contributions presented in thesevolumesarerevisedandexpandedversionsofthenotesprovidedtothestudents during the school. After the rst volume, developing the Hamiltonian approach of open quantum systems, this second volume is dedicated to the Markovian approach. The third volume presents both approaches, but at the recent research level. Open quantum systems A quantum open system is a quantum system which is interacting with another one. This is a general de nition, but in general, it is understood that one of the s- tems is rather “small” or “simple” compared to the other one which is supposed to be huge, to be the environment, a gas of particles, a beam of photons, a heat bath ... The aim of quantum open system theory is to study the behaviour of this coupled system and in particular the dissipation of the small system in favour of the large one.