title: Towards a Theory of Metastability in Open Quantum Dynamics.
abstract: By generalizing concepts from classical stochastic dynamics, we establish the basis for a theory of metastability in Markovian open quantum systems. Partial relaxation into long-lived metastable states-distinct from the asymptotic stationary state-is a manifestation of a separation of time scales due to a splitting in the spectrum of the generator of the dynamics. We show here how to exploit this spectral structure to obtain a low dimensional approximation to the dynamics in terms of motion in a manifold of metastable states constructed from the low-lying eigenmatrices of the generator. We argue that the metastable manifold is in general composed of disjoint states, noiseless subsystems, and decoherence-free subspaces.
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.|School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Katarzyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Macieszczak
authors.affiliation: School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mădălin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guţă
authors.affiliation: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lesanovsky
authors.affiliation: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Juan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Garrahan