text:
# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Following Bell, a local hidden variables model (LHV) exists for an Einstein-Podilsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment if it is possible to write the single and joint detection probabilities in the form

$$p_i=\rho (\lambda )P_i(\lambda ,\varphi _i)d\lambda ;p_{12}=\rho (\lambda )P_1(\lambda ,\varphi _1)P_2(\lambda ,\varphi _2)d\lambda ,$$
(1)
$`\lambda `$ being the hidden variables with a probability distribution $`\rho (\lambda ).`$ $`P_i(\lambda ,\varphi _i)`$ $`(i=1,2),`$ are some functions fulfilling the conditions $`0P_i(\lambda ,\varphi _i)1`$. $`\varphi _1`$ and $`\varphi _2`$ represent controllable parameters of the experimental setup.

Many experiments have been performed in order to test local realism vs. quantum mechanics via Bell’s inequalities, but none of these experiments have violated Bell’s genuine inequalities, which are based upon the assumptions of realism and locality alone. All inequalities tested up to now involve additional assumptions, like no-enhancement. In the last few years  experiments using photon pairs produced in parametric down conversion (PDC) have become very popular. LHV models for EPR experiments with PDC have appeared in the literature , the aim of which has been to show that local realism had not been ruled out by these experiments, and to stress the relevance of the so called “loopholes”, in particular the one due to the low efficiency of optical photon counters. However, those models were mathematical constructs without physical content; they have no predictive power.

The purpose of this paper is to exhibit a physical model which is based on the Wigner formulation of PDC. Our previous work  has shown that the Wigner function of the electromagnetic field is positive for all performed experiments, and hence it provides a realistic description for the production and propagation of the radiation in these experiments. In particular, the Wigner function of the vacuum is the gaussian

$$W(\{\alpha _𝐤,\alpha _𝐤^{}\})=\underset{𝐤}{}\frac{2}{\pi }e^{2|\alpha _𝐤|^2},$$
(2)
which in our local realistic model is interpreted as the probability distribution of a random radiation filling the whole space (the zeropoint field, ZPF). Thus the amplitudes {$`\alpha _𝐤\}`$ play the role of the hidden variables $`\lambda `$ and W the role of the function $`\rho (\lambda )`$ in Eq.(1). The nonlinear crystal, acted by a laser beam, gives an outgoing PDC field

$$E^{(+)}=\underset{𝐤}{}\left(\frac{\mathrm{}\omega }{ϵ_0L_0^3}\right)^{1/2}[\alpha _𝐤e^{i𝐤𝐫+i\omega t}+g\alpha _𝐤^{}e^{i(𝐤_0𝐤)𝐫+i(\omega _0\omega )t}+\frac{1}{2}g^2\alpha _𝐤e^{i𝐤𝐫+i\omega t}],$$

where the first term is the ZPF that crosses the crystal without any modification, and the other terms are produced via the non-linear coupling between the laser and the ZPF ($`g`$ is the coupling parameter).

The PDC beam propagates through a number of devices (lenses, beam splitters, etc.) characteristic of every experiment and finally some intensity Ij arrives at every detector j. The intensity Ij is a function bilinear of the amplitudes $`\alpha _𝐤`$ and $`\alpha _𝐤^{}`$ of Eq.(1). These functions Ij are quite involved and have been studied in detail in Refs. for many experiments. The single and joint detection probabilities are given by

$$p_j=W(\{\alpha _𝐤\},\{\alpha _𝐤^{}\})Q_j(\{\alpha _𝐤\},\{\alpha _𝐤^{}\},\varphi )d^N\alpha _𝐤d^N\alpha _𝐤^{},$$
(3)
$$p_{12}=W(\{\alpha _𝐤\},\{\alpha _𝐤^{}\})Q_1(\{\alpha _𝐤\},\{\alpha _𝐤^{}\},\varphi _1)Q_2(\{\alpha _𝐤\},\{\alpha _𝐤^{}\},\varphi _2)d^N\alpha _𝐤d^N\alpha _𝐤^{},$$
(4)
where

$$Q=\frac{\eta }{h\nu }𝑑td^2r\left[I(\{\alpha _𝐤\},\{\alpha _𝐤^{}\},\varphi ,𝐫,t)I_0\right],$$
(5)
$`I=E^+E^{}`$ being the intensity of the field arriving at the corresponding detector and $`I_0`$ is a constant which in our model is interpreted as the mean intensity of the the ZPF. The integration is carried over the time window and the surface aperture of the detector. We have divided 5 by the typical energy of one photon, so that $`Q`$ becomes dimensionless, $`\eta `$ being the quantum efficiency of the detector.

The relevant question is whether (3) and (4) may be considered particular cases of (1) with Qj playing the role of Pj. The answer is not affirmative because we cannot guarantee that $`0Q1`$. Consequently we conclude that it is not possible to interpret directly the Wigner-function formalism as an LHV model for the PDC experiments.

## 2 The Detection Model

We shall devote the rest of the article to the description of the model of a detector that works in a strictly local way and provides the LHV model we are searching for. We will first show the basic points of our model:

1. The detector consists of a set of individual photodetector elements, $`D_l`$, each characterized by a frequency $`\omega _l`$, and a wave vector $`𝐤_l`$ ($`\omega _l=|𝐤_l|/c`$), to which $`D_l`$ responds. We shall consider the direction of $`𝐤_l`$ to be normal to the surface of the detector, which is taken as a cylinder of area $`\pi R^2`$ and length $`L`$.
2. The relevant quantity for the detection is a filtered field corresponding to a detector element $`D_j`$:

$$\overline{E}_l^{(+)}=\frac{1}{\pi R^2LT}_V𝑑V_0^TE^{(+)}(𝐫,t)\text{e}^{i𝐤_l𝐫+i\omega _lt}𝑑t.$$
(6)
Hence it follows that the photodectector element $`D_l`$ is sensitive to radiation with frequencies in the interval $`(\omega _l\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\omega }{2},\omega _l+\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\omega }{2})`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega \frac{2\pi }{T},`$ $`T`$ being the detection time window. If we assume that the incoming light beam has frequencies in the interval ($`\omega _{\mathrm{min}},\omega _{\mathrm{max}})`$ with an average frequency $`\overline{\omega }=(\omega _{max}+\omega _{min})/2,`$ and $`\tau `$ is the coherence time of the beam, we shall have $`\delta \omega \omega _{\mathrm{max}}\omega _{\mathrm{min}}2\pi /\tau ,`$ so that the minimum number of detecting elements is $`N\delta \omega /\mathrm{\Delta }\omega T/\tau .`$ By putting typical values, $`T=10^8s`$ and $`\tau =10^{12}s`$, we have the condition $`N>10^4`$.
3. We now define the effective intensity obtained from the filtered fields in the form

$$\overline{I}=cϵ_0\underset{l=1}{\overset{N}{}}\overline{E}_l^{(+)}\overline{E}_l^{()}.$$
(7)
After that we replace the standard quantum Eq.(5) by the expression

$$Q(\overline{I})=(1\text{e}^{\zeta (\overline{I}\overline{I}_0)})\mathrm{\Theta }(\overline{I}I_m);\zeta =\eta (h\nu )^1,$$
(8)
which completes the definition of our model. $`\overline{I}_0`$ is the average of $`\overline{I}`$ for the ZPF. $`I_m`$ is some threshold intensity fulfilling the condition $`I_m>\overline{I}_0`$, and $`\mathrm{\Theta }(x)`$ is the Heaviside function.
4. Now we rewrite the detection probabilities $`\left(\text{3}\right)`$ and $`\left(\text{4}\right)`$ in the following equivalent form

$$p=\rho (\overline{I})Q(\overline{I})d\overline{I};p_{12}=\rho _{12}(\overline{I}_1,\overline{I}_2)Q_1(\overline{I}_1)Q_2(\overline{I}_2)d\overline{I}_1d\overline{I}_{2.}$$
(9)

The probability distribution of the effective intensity is a gaussian, which is determined by the mean and the standard deviation (for details see ). For instance, the probability distribution for the zeropoint field is

$$\rho _0(\overline{I})=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi }\sigma _0}\text{e}^{(\overline{I}\overline{I}_0)^2/2\sigma _0^2};\overline{I}_0=\frac{\overline{\omega }\delta \omega }{8\pi cL};\sigma _0=\overline{I}_0\sqrt{\frac{\tau }{T}}.$$
(10)
The probability distribution of the effective intensity when there is a PDC signal present, $`\rho (\overline{I}),`$ is similar to that of the ZPF, but the following remarks are in order: $`(a)`$ We shall define the signal mean effective intensity by $`\overline{I}_s=\overline{I}\overline{I}_0.`$ Here the word mean refers to both, time average over the detection window and ensemble average with the distribution function Eq.(2). If we assume that the signal enters parallel to the axis of the detector, it can be shown that the effective intensity, $`\overline{I}_s,`$ is equal to the actual intensity, i.e. $`\overline{I}_sI_s.`$ In practical situations the relation $`\overline{I}_s\overline{I}_0`$ is fulfilled. $`(b)`$The relation between the mean and the standard deviation is completely analogous to that of the ZPF alone (see Eq. (10)), and the distribution of the effective intensity $`\overline{I}`$ may be written

$$\rho (\overline{I})=\frac{\sqrt{T/\tau }}{\sqrt{2\pi }\overline{I}_0}\text{e}^{\frac{(\overline{I}\overline{I}_0\overline{I}_s)^2T}{2\overline{I}_0{}_{}{}^{2}\tau }}.$$
(11)
On the other hand, $`\rho (\overline{I}_1,\overline{I}_2)`$ is a doble gaussian function which is defined by the mean values of its marginals, their standard deviations and the correlation function $`(\overline{I}_1\overline{I}_{1s}\overline{I}_{10})(\overline{I}_2\overline{I}_{2s}\overline{I}_{20})`$.

## 3 The Detection Probabilities

In this section we shall compare the predicted detection probabilities of our model with those of quantum optics. In the case of single detection probability, let us consider the three following possible situations:

i) $`\overline{I}_s=0`$. In sharp contrast with quantum optics, our model predicts the existence of some counts in any detector even in the absence of signal, the probability being very small if $`I_m\overline{I}_0\sigma _0.`$

ii) $`\zeta \overline{I}_s\sigma _0.`$ This should be the normal situation in experimental practice. In this case we may choose $`I_m`$ so that $`\overline{I}_0+\overline{I}_sI_m\sigma _0`$, but $`I_m>\overline{I}_0`$ in order to preserve the positivity of $`Q`$ in Eq. (8). With these two constraints it can be shown that $`p\zeta I_s,`$ a result that agrees with the quantum one if we put $`\zeta =\frac{\eta _i}{h\nu _i}`$ .

iii) $`\zeta \overline{I}_s\sigma _0`$. In this case the detector saturates and gives a count in every time window.

Finally, in the case of the joint detection probability the predictions of our model coincide with the quantum result in the limits $`\frac{\eta _i}{h\nu _i}(\overline{I}_i\overline{I}_{i0})1`$, which requires $`\overline{I}_{is}+\overline{I}_{i0}\overline{I}_{im}\sigma _0`$.

## 4 Constraints of the Model

In our model there is a trade-off between the constraint $`\overline{I}_0+\overline{I}_sI_m\sigma _0`$, required for the linearity of the response at low efficiency, and $`I_m\overline{I}_0\sigma _0,`$ needed for the smallness of the dark counting probability. The need to satisfy both conditions implies that $`\overline{I}_s>>\sigma _0.`$ This means that there is a minimal intensity of the signal which may be reliably detected, a constraint absent in the quantum theory of detection, but certainly existing in experimental practice.

Let us analyze the consequences of the constraint. In experimental practice a lens is placed in front of the detector in such a way that the signal field has spatial coherence on the surface of the lens. The condition for having spatial coherence is $`d\lambda R_lR_C,`$ $`d`$ being the typical distance between the nonlinear medium (with radius $`R_C`$) and the detector; $`R_l`$ is the radius of the lens. On the other hand, the zeropoint field is not modified by the lens, which is evident because of the fact that energy cannot be extracted from the vacuum. As a consequence, the intensity of the incident signal is amplified by a factor $`b^2\pi ^2R_l^4/\lambda ^2f^2,`$ $`f`$ being the focal distance. On the other hand, $`84\%`$ ($`91\%`$) of the total intensity is concentrated within the first (second) ring of the difraction pattern with a radius $`R=a\times (f\lambda /2R_l)=a\lambda /A_r`$, where $`A_r=2R_l/f`$ is the relative aperture of the lens and $`a=1.22`$ ($`2.23`$) for the first (second) ring . Consequently, the optimun radius of the detector is given by $`R`$.

By taking into account the above considerations, and using Eq. (10) and the condition $`d\lambda R_lR_C`$ , the constraint $`\overline{I}_s\sigma _0`$ gives

$$\mathrm{Rate}>>\frac{\eta f^2R_C^2}{2Ld^2\lambda \sqrt{\tau T}},$$
(12)
which puts a lower bound on the single rates which may be used in reliable experiments. This result cannot be derived from $`\left(\mathrm{conventional}\right)`$ quantum theory. By putting typical parameters, that is $`\eta 0.1,`$ $`R_l`$, $`L`$ and $`f`$ of the order of fractions of a centimeter, $`10`$ nm (which gives a coherence time $`\tau `$ $`1`$ ps) we get a minimal counting rate of the order of 10$`{}_{}{}^{5}10^6`$ counts per second. This figure agrees fairly well with the actual experiments and should be considered a success of our model.

## 5 Acknowledgement

We acknowledge financial support by DGICYT Project No. PB-98-0191 (Spain).


format: text

text:
# Magneto-exciton in planar type II quantum dots in a perpendicular magnetic field

## I Introduction

Self-assembled quantum dots  have become the subject of intensive research, both theoretically and experimentally, since their first realization in the early nineties . The reason for this large interest is e.g. due to their possible applications in opto-electronic devices, such as quantum dot lasers. The formation of this type of dots by the Stranski-Krastanow growth mode requires two semiconductor materials with a considerable lattice mismatch of typically 5%. Many experimental  and theoretical  works are devoted to type I structures, e.g. $`InAs/GaAs`$ or $`InAlAs/AlGaAs,`$ where both electrons and holes are located inside the quantum dots.

Also very interesting, though yet less studied, are the type II quantum dots, where the quantum dot forms an antidot for one of the types of carriers, e.g. for the holes in typically the $`InP/GaInP`$ system or the electrons in e.g. $`GaSb/GaAs`$. Landau level formation in strongly optically populated type II dots was observed by Nomura et al in the photoluminescence spectra at high magnetic fields. Other magneto-photoluminescence experiments on vertically stacked $`InP`$ quantum dots were performed by Hayne et al. . Sugisaki et al.  studied the magnetic field effects in a single $`InP`$ dot. The optical recombination spectrum and the carrier dynamics of the $`GaSb/GaAs`$ system have been studied experimentally by Hatami et al. .

Whereas the type I system has been the subject of many theoretical works, only few theoretical studies have paid attention to the type II system. Pryor et al.  studied the electronic structure of $`InP/GaInP`$, using a strain-dependent $`𝐤𝐩`$ Hamiltonian. Also for $`InP/GaInP`$ dots, Nomura et al.  performed a theoretical calculation of the Landau levels in a high magnetic field, by solving the Hartree equations self-consistently. Using the Hartree-Fock approximation, the binding energy of excitons, charged excitons and biexcitons was studied by Lelong et al.  in $`GaSb/GaAs`$ dots at zero magnetic field. The magneto-exciton in a $`GaSb/GaAs`$ dot was investigated by Kalameitsev et al. They found transitions of the angular momentum with increasing magnetic field.

In the present paper, we focus our attention to the properties of a single exciton, which is bound by the Coulomb interaction in a model type II quantum dot. We will take material parameters of the $`InP/GaInP`$ system. Furthermore, we apply an external magnetic field in the growth direction, i.e. $`𝐁=B𝐞_z`$. Including a magnetic field allows us to investigate the transition region from exciton confinement due to the Coulomb potential, to a confinement which is due to the magnetic field. As a model system we take a planar quantum disk, and assume that the particles are confined in a plane in the $`z`$-direction. Strain effects are neglected in this model system.

In our model type II quantum dot the electron is confined in the dot and the hole sits outside. The corresponding geometry is shown in Fig. 1. The reverse confinement situation will lead to the same physics. As we do not take the confinement effects due to strain into account, the hole is only confined because of the Coulomb attraction to the electron. As we have no a priori knowledge about the width of the hole wavefunction it is difficult to choose good basisfunctions for the expansion of the hole wavefunction. Therefore, we solved the Hartree-Fock (HF) equations on a grid, which allows very flexible solutions, in principle of arbitrary shape. With the same motivation, similar Hartree-Fock mesh calculations were recently used in atomic physics .

As confinement potential, we take hard walls of finite height. By varying the hole confinement potential, we can study the transition from a type I structure (i.e., the hole is confined in the dot) to a type II structure (i.e., the dot is a barrier for the hole). We show that for small antidots the attraction of the hole to the electron is stronger than the barrier energy and the system is still type I. Increasing the barrier height and/or the size of the dot induces a transition to a type II system. Furthermore, we found angular momentum transitions with increasing magnetic field. For large enough magnetic fields (depending on the height of the potential barrier), we find a new re-entrant behaviour to the zero angular momentum state.

The paper is organized as follows. In Sec. II, we describe briefly our theoretical model. The numerical results are presented in Sec. III. In Part A of this Section, we discuss the effect of a varying magnetic field and explain the origin of the angular momentum transitions. Part B deals with the transition from a type I to a type II system. Part C is dedicated to the re-entrant behaviour. In the last Part, D, we present the results for the excitation spectrum. Our results are summarized in Sec. IV. In the Appendix, we discuss in more detail the method we used for the calculation of the Hartree integral.

## II Theoretical model

The energies and wavefunctions are obtained by solving the following HF single particle equations in the effective mass approximation (with $`m_e`$ and $`m_h`$ the effective electron and hole masses, respectively, $`r_{e,h}=\sqrt{x_{e,h}^2+y_{e,h}^2},`$ $`\omega _{c,e}=eB/m_e`$ and $`\omega _{c,h}=eB/m_h`$)

$`[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m_e}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r_e}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{r_e}}\left(r_e{\displaystyle \frac{}{r_e}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m_e}}{\displaystyle \frac{l_e^2}{r_e^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{l_e}{2}}\mathrm{}\omega _{c,e}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}m_e\omega _{c,e}^2r_e^2`$ (1)
$`+V_e(r_e){\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ}}{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _h(r^{})}{|𝐫𝐫^{}|}}d𝐫^{}]\psi _e(r_e)=ϵ_e\psi _e(r_e),`$ ()
$`[{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m_h}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{r_h}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{r_h}}\left(r_h{\displaystyle \frac{}{r_h}}\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2m_h}}{\displaystyle \frac{l_h^2}{r_h^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{l_h}{2}}\mathrm{}\omega _{c,h}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}m_h\omega _{c,h}^2r_h^2`$ (2)
$`+V_h(r_h){\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ}}{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _e(r^{})}{|𝐫𝐫^{}|}}d𝐫^{}]\psi _h(r_h)=ϵ_h\psi _h(r_h),`$ ()
where we made use of the axial symmetry by taking $`\mathrm{\Psi }_e(r_e,\phi _e)=e^{il_e\phi _e}\psi _e(r_e)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_h(r_h,\phi _h)=e^{il_h\phi _h}\psi _h(r_h),`$ and where the densities $`\rho _e(r^{})`$ and $`\rho _h(r^{})`$ are given by respectively $`\left|\mathrm{\Psi }_e(r_e,\phi _e)\right|^2`$ and $`\left|\mathrm{\Psi }_h(r_h,\phi _h)\right|^2`$. The Hartree-fock equations were solved using a finite difference scheme. More details about the implementation of this finite difference scheme can be found in Refs. . Note that there are no exchange terms as we only consider a single electron and a single hole. However, these equations can still be called HF as the self-interaction is excluded. As confinement potentials we take hard walls of finite height:

$$V_{e,h}(r_e,r_h)=\{\begin{array}{c}V_{e,h},r_{e,h}>R,\\ 0,\text{otherwise},\end{array}$$
(3)
with $`R`$ the radius of the disk, and where we took $`V_e`$ positive and $`V_h`$ negative. Note that the only good quantum number is the total angular momentum in the $`z`$-direction, defined by $`L=l_e+l_h.`$

These equations must be solved self-consistently, which is done iteratively. We start with the free electron solution because in the absence of any Coulomb interaction only the free electron is confined. The Hartree integrals are integrated numerically

$$\frac{\rho (r^{})}{|𝐫𝐫^{}|}𝑑𝐫^{}=4\frac{\rho (r^{})r^{}}{r+r^{}}𝒦\left(\frac{4rr^{}}{(r+r^{})^2}\right)𝑑r^{},$$
(4)
where $`𝒦(x)`$ is the complete elliptic integral of the first kind. More details about the calculation and numerical implementation of this integral is given in the Appendix.

After convergence, the total energy is given by

$$E_{\text{exciton}}=ϵ_e+ϵ_h+\frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ}\frac{\rho _e(r)\rho _h(r^{})}{|𝐫𝐫^{}|}𝑑𝐫𝑑𝐫^{}.$$
(5)
The contribution of the correlation to the total energy is neglected in HF, but for the self-assembled quantum dots, it is expected to be less than 2% .

## III Results

### A Angular momentum transitions

First, we calculated the groundstate energy of the exciton as a function of the external magnetic field. We took the following parameters: $`m_e=0.077m_0,`$ $`m_h=0.6m_0,`$ $`V_e=250meV,`$ $`V_h=50meV,`$ and $`ϵ=12.61,`$ which are typical for the $`InP/GaInP`$ system  and consider a dot of radius $`R=8nm`$ . Our numerical results are depicted in Fig. 2 and show that the exciton groundstate exhibits transitions of the angular momentum $`l_h`$ as a function of the magnetic field (indicated by the arrows). These changes in angular momentum of the groundstate are not present in type I dots and are a direct consequence of the fact that we are dealing with type II dots. For the hole, the disk acts as a barrier and by increasing the magnetic field the hole is pushed closer to the disk boundary which leads to an increase of the hole potential energy. For a certain magnetic field it is for the hole energetically more favourable to jump to a higher $`l_h`$ state, which brings the hole further away from the disk interface. This is also demonstrated in the inset of Fig. 2, where a contourplot of the density of the hole wavefunction is shown, as a function of both the magnetic field and the radial position. It is apparent that the hole is located close to the disk, even at zero magnetic field and that with increasing magnetic field the hole is pushed closer to the border of the disk. At the angular momentum transitions the hole is spread out a little more, and jumps a distance away from the disk interface. But note that on the average the hole is pushed closer to the disk boundary and its width decreases with increasing magnetic field. For the present case we find five transitions for a magnetic field up to $`B=50T`$.

The magnetic field values at which the angular momentum transitions occur will depend on the disk radius $`R`$. Fig. 3 shows a phase diagram of the $`l_h`$ transitions as a function of the magnetic field $`B`$ and the disk radius $`R,`$ for the $`InP`$ parameters used above. With increasing disk radius, the transitions shift to lower magnetic field values. This can be understood as follows: for larger disks, a smaller magnetic field is needed to push the hole close to the border of the disk, and to induce an angular momentum transition.

Another way to understand the angular momentum transitions is as follows. The hole is spatially confined into a ring-like area, and if we make the extreme simplification of a zero width ring, the hole energy is given by

$$E_h=\frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2mR^2}\left(l_h\frac{\varphi }{\varphi _0}\right)^2,$$
(6)
from which it is clear that the ground state exhibits angular momentum transitions each time the flux through the ring $`\varphi `$ equals $`(l_h+1/2)\varphi _0`$ with $`\varphi _0=hc/e`$ the quantum of flux.

### B Type II to type I transitions

In Fig. 4 we give a closer look at the hole wavefunction for a very small disk $`R=2nm,`$ $`V_h=50meV`$ and $`B=0T,`$ and we find that, even without a magnetic field, the hole is partially situated inside the quantum disk. This is a remarkable effect, as from the shape of the effective potential, defined by the sum of the confinement potential and the Hartree potential (inset of Fig. 4), we would expect the hole wavefunction to be situated in the barrier. We attribute this effect to a kind of tunneling of the hole through the quantum disk, as a consequence of the very small disk radius. Remark that this state continues to be the groundstate and that the effect becomes even stronger for higher fields. Another consequence of this effect is a higher overlap of the electron and hole wavefunctions, which is an indication of type I behaviour.

In a next step, we studied the exciton properties as a function of the hole confinement potential, which allows us to explore the transition region from type I systems $`\left(V_h>0\right)`$ to type II systems $`\left(V_h<0\right).`$ Hereby we kept the disk radius fixed at $`R=8nm.`$ Fig. 5 shows the phase diagram for the angular momentum transitions as a function of the confinement potential $`V_h`$ and the magnetic field $`B.`$ A feature that immediately catches the eye is that up to $`V_h24.5meV`$ the $`l_h=0`$ state remains the groundstate over the total $`B`$-region under consideration. Investigating this more in depth, we find that, even for $`B=0T,`$ the hole wavefunction is located almost entirely inside the quantum disk. This is a consequence of the Hartree potential (due to the attraction to the electron) which overcomes the potential barrier of the disk. Therefore, we can speak of type I systems up to $`V_h24.5meV.`$

In order to have a more physical idea of the origin the type I to type II transition, we developed the following intuitive picture. When the system is type I, the hole will be located inside the quantum disk. This will happen when the effective potential (the sum of the hole confinement potential and the Hartree potential, i.e. $`V_c(r_h)+V_h`$ (see the inset of Fig. 4)) is lower at $`r_h=0`$ than at $`r_h=R.`$ For a type II system however, the effective potential will be lower at the boundary, and the hole will prefer to sit outside the disk but near the boundary. Generally, we can state that the transition from type I to type II occurs when the effective potential at the origin equals the one at the radial boundary. Because we take the confinement potential zero inside the disk, this leads to the following formula:

$$V_c(r_h=0)=V_h+V_c(r_h=R).$$
(7)
From this equality, we can find an estimate for the confinement potential $`V_h`$ at which the type I to type II transition occurs. The Hartree potential was calculated within the approximation of an infinitely high electron confinement potential, where the electron wavefunction can be expressed by the Bessel functions $`J_0`$, i.e.

$$V_c(r_h)=\frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ}N^2\frac{\left|J_0(kr_e^{})\right|^2}{\left|r_hr_e^{}\right|}𝑑𝐫_e^{},$$
(8)
with $`N^2=2/(R^2\left|J_1(kr_e^{})\right|^2)`$ the normalization, and $`k=\sqrt{2m_eE}/\mathrm{}`$. In Fig. 6, we plot the values for $`V_h`$ as a function of the disk radius $`R`$ at which such a type I to type II transition occurs. We show the results obtained by the full Hartree-Fock calculation (full curve, squared dots) and the approximated results, as obtained from Eq. (6) (dashed curve, circular dots). We find that for large $`R`$ the two curves converge to each other, but that for small $`R`$ an appreciable discrepancy exists. This is due to the fact that for small disk radii, the approximation of a hard wall confinement is less justified. By pushing the electron wavefunction completely into the disk (in contrast to the ‘real’ case of a finite potential, where the wavefunction can tunnel into the barrier), the Hartree potential is strongly enhanced, thereby leading to a strong enhancement of the critical confinement potential $`V_h.`$

Another interesting property is the probability for recombination of the exciton. This is proportional to the square of the overlap integral

$`I`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \mathrm{\Psi }_e\left(𝐫\right)\mathrm{\Psi }_h\left(𝐫\right)𝑑𝐫}`$ (9)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _0^{2\pi }}e^{i(l_e+l_h)}𝑑\phi {\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}\psi _e\left(r\right)\psi _h\left(r\right)r𝑑r\text{ .}`$ ()
Notice that the first integral is equal to $`2\pi \delta _{l_e+l_h},`$ what means that the probability for de-excitation is only non-zero for the case $`l_e+l_h=0.`$ This implies that after an angular momentum transition the probability for recombination of an exciton decreases drastically. In photoluminescence (PL) experiments, one will observe a strong quenching or even disappearance of the PL spectrum after a certain value of the magnetic field.

Fig. 7 shows the overlap integral $`I`$ as a function of $`V_h,`$ for $`B=0T.`$ Without a magnetic field, the $`l_h=0`$ state is always the groundstate and therefore, $`I`$ is non-zero over the total region. Up to $`V_h=25meV`$ the overlap is large, and further increasing $`V_h,`$ we find a sudden strong decrease of the overlap. The reason for this behaviour is directly related to the position of the hole wavefunction. As long as the hole is sitting inside the disk, the overlap will be very large. However, from the moment the hole jumps outside the disk, the overlap decreases strongly. In fact, from Fig. 7 we can infer immediately the position of the hole. Furthermore, the region of the strong decrease in overlap indicates the transition from type I to type II behaviour. The dashed line gives the overlap integral at $`B=20T.`$ As we see from Fig. 5, a transition to the $`l_h=1`$ state occurs when the confinement potential $`V_h`$ approaches $`24.5meV`$ and the condition $`l_e+l_h=0`$ for recombination of the exciton, is no longer satisfied, which leads to $`I=0.`$ The recombination of the exciton will happen through indirect processes, resulting in a much longer lifetime of the exciton. The changing lifetime can be detected experimentally by a changing lineshape .

### C Re-entrant behaviour

In this section, we concentrate more closely on the type I - type II transition region, i.e. $`V_h`$ between $`20meV`$ and $`30meV.`$ As an example, we investigated the exciton groundstate energy for $`V_h=27meV.`$ The result is depicted in Fig. 8 which shows one additional remarkable feature: after several $`l_h`$ transitions with increasing magnetic field, we find at sufficiently large magnetic field, i.e. $`B42T,`$ a re-entrance of the $`l_h=0`$ state. It is interesting also to take a look at the evolution of the wavefunction with increasing magnetic field. This is depicted as a contourplot in the inset of Fig. 8. Initially, for very small magnetic fields, we find that a small part of the wavefunction has already entered the dot region. However, at $`B6T,`$ due to a jump to a higher angular momentum state, the hole wavefunction is pushed outside the dot region. Further increasing the magnetic field leads to more $`l_h`$ transitions, as we found already in Section III.A. At the specific magnetic field value however, where the re-entrance of $`l_h=0`$ occurs, we find that suddenly the hole wavefunction jumps almost entirely inside the disk. At this point, the magnetic field and the attraction of the electron overcomes the potential barrier of the quantum disk, and it will be energetically more favourable for the hole to sit inside the disk.

The re-entrant behaviour is also visible in the $`(B,V_h)`$-phase diagram (Fig. 5). We want to emphasize that there will be a re-entrant behaviour for any value of $`V_h<24.5meV`$, for sufficiently large magnetic fields. This can already be seen from Fig. 5, where the line which indicates the transition from a certain $`l_h`$-state to the $`l_h=0`$ state is not a straight vertical line, but has a small slope. For example for $`V_h=50meV`$ we found that a magnetic field of $`B=193T`$ is needed to induce this re-entrance to the $`l_h=0`$ state.

Another question which arises is how the disk radius influences the re-entrant behaviour. In our previous investigation of the influence of the disk radius on the groundstate energy, we found no evidence of this, because we did not consider large enough magnetic fields for the confinement potential under consideration $`\left(V_h=50meV\right).`$ Therefore, we decided to make a new $`(B,R)`$-phase diagram, this time for $`V_h=25meV,`$ for which we know from Fig. 5 that re-entrant behaviour occurs at rather small magnetic fields. The result is depicted in Fig. 9, and the first striking feature is that the re-entrant behaviour occurs for any disk with radius $`R>8nm.`$ Furthermore, we find more $`l_h`$ transitions for larger disk radii, hereby increasing the magnetic field at which the re-entrance of $`l_h=0`$ takes place. However at $`R12nm,`$ we find that the magnetic field position of the re-entrant behaviour reaches a maximum value, $`B42T.`$ For larger disk radii, the re-entrance occurs at slightly decreasing magnetic field. Indeed, with increasing disk radius, electron and hole are drawn more and more apart, and therefore it will sooner become energetically more favourable for the hole to jump inside the disk.

This re-entrant behaviour can be understood qualitatively from the following simple model. We compare the approximate energies for a hole of respectively a type II and a type I system:

$`E_h^{II}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{3}{2}}\mathrm{}\omega _{c,h}{\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ_0ϵ}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{R}}V_h,`$ ()
$`E_h^I`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{}\omega _{c,h}E_{Coulomb}.`$ ()
The approximate energy for a hole in a type II system (Eq. (9a)) is constructed by approximating the disk (with radius $`R`$) by an infinitely high barrier for the hole. The first term of Eq. (9a) gives the one-particle energy of the hole, which is just the first energy level of a particle in a magnetic field which fulfils the zero-wavefunction condition at the disk boundary. The second term is the Coulomb interaction between the electron and the hole, and the third is the potential energy of the hole. In a type I system (Eq. (9b)) both electron and hole are located inside the disk, and are subjected to a magnetic field. Now the one-particle hole energy is just the energy of the first Landau level. We approximated the Coulomb energy (second term in Eq. (9b)) by using the single particle wavefunction of electron and hole. At strong magnetic fields and for large disk radii i.e. $`R>l_B`$, the potential confinement by the disk can be neglected with regard to the confinement by the magnetic field. The single particle wavefunctions are then the well-known wavefunctions of a particle in a magnetic field, given by

$$\phi _{e,h}\left(𝐫_{e,h}\right)=\sqrt{\frac{1}{\pi }}\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}l_B}\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{r_{e,h}^2}{4l_B^2}\right),$$
(10)
for the groundstate $`(n=0,l_h=0).`$ As the wavefunctions are mass-independent, there is no distinction between the electron and the hole. Therefore we can treat our system as being completely analogous to a system consisting of two electrons in a magnetic field, for which our first order approximation of the Coulomb interaction energy can be calculated analytically, and which reduces to

$`E_{Coul}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ_0ϵ}}{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\pi }}{2}}\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{e}{\mathrm{}}}}\sqrt{B}`$ ()
$`=`$ $`C_{coul}\sqrt{B}.`$ ()
Equalization of Eqs. (9a) and (9b) gives us the magnetic field at which the re-entrance occurs as a function of both disk radius $`R`$ and confinement potential $`V_h.`$ The transition magnetic field can be obtained analytically as

$`B`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{m_h^2}{2e^2\mathrm{}^2}}C_{coul}\times \left(C_{coul}\sqrt{C_{coul}^2+{\displaystyle \frac{4e\mathrm{}}{m_h}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ_0ϵ}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{R}}+V_h\right)}\right)`$ ()
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{m}{e\mathrm{}}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{4\pi ϵ_0ϵ}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{R}}+V_h\right).`$
For a fixed radius $`R,`$ we can vary $`V_h`$ and deduce the magnetic field at which the transition occurs. The result is shown by the dashed curve in Fig. 5. For large fields, the approximated curve (dashed line) has qualitatively the same behaviour as the curve obtained from the full Hartree-Fock treatment and the two curves converge to each other. The result for a fixed $`V_h,`$ when varying the disk radius $`R,`$ is shown by the dashed curve in Fig 9. We find a perfect agreement for large disk radii, where our model is valid. The discrepancy for small disk radii is a consequence of our assumption to neglect the disk confinement.

Fig. 10 shows the overlap integral $`I`$ as a function of the magnetic field, for confinement potentials of the hole $`V_h=25meV`$ (solid curve) and $`V_h=27meV`$ (dashed curve) and a fixed disk radius $`R=8nm.`$ At first we find a slowly increasing overlap, which is a consequence of the increasing magnetic field, pushing the particles closer together. The already rather large value of the overlap indicates that a considerable part of the hole is already situated inside the disk. When the first $`l_h`$-transition occurs, the overlap falls immediately down to zero, because $`l_e+l_h0`$. The overlap remains zero, until the $`l_h=0`$ state returns as the groundstate and the condition $`l_e+l_h=0`$ is satisfied. This re-entrance of $`l_h=0`$ is accompanied by a jump of the wavefunction in the disk, and this leads to the strong enhancement of the overlap value. We see that the re-entrance of the $`l_h=0`$ state happens at lower magnetic fields for the lower potential barrier.

Fig. 11 shows the overlap integral $`I`$ as a function of the disk radius $`R`$ for $`B=0T`$ (solid curve), $`B=20T`$ (dashed curve) and $`B=40T`$ (dotted curve). This figure gives evidence for the fact that for very small radii the hole wavefunction is almost entirely situated inside the disk. For increasing disk radius, the hole is pushed more and more outside the disk, hereby decreasing the value of the overlap integral. This decrease is initially less for increasing magnetic field because of the enhanced localization effect. For sufficiently large magnetic fields, $`l_h`$ transitions are induced, which leads to a zero overlap integral. Also here we see that for sufficient large $`R`$ a re-entrant behaviour to the $`l_h=0`$ state is found at which point the overlap integral becomes again non-zero.

### D Excitation spectrum

Lastly, we investigated the exciton energy spectrum as a function of the magnetic field. The physical parameters used in this calculation are the ones mentioned in Section II, with a disk radius $`R=8nm.`$ We considered states with different radial quantum numbers $`k_e,`$ $`k_h`$ and different angular momenta $`l_e`$, $`l_h.`$ Note that $`k_e`$ and $`k_h`$ are approximate quantum numbers for the current system. Furthermore, our results are a first order perturbation theory approximation to the real energy spectrum, as we perform only one HF iteration, i.e. the energy of the exciton is obtained by solving the equation for the hole in the field of the confined electron. Note that changing the electron quantum number results in a strong increase of the energy value. The states $`(k_e,l_e)=(2,0)`$ and $`(1,\pm 2)`$ appear to be already unbound, i.e. the energy exceeds the electron barrier of $`250meV`$. The inset of Fig. 12(a) shows the bound states of the energy spectrum where we varied both $`k_e`$ and $`l_e,`$ keeping $`k_h`$ and $`l_h`$ fixed at $`(0,0).`$ The main part of Fig. 12(a) shows the energy spectrum for fixed $`(k_e,l_e)=(0,0)`$ and varying the hole quantum numbers $`k_h`$ and $`l_h.`$ We find that now the energy values span a smaller energy region. This is due to the fact that: i) the hole is much heavier than the electron, and therefore has substantially lower energies, and ii) the hole is less confined. In fact, for every possible value of the electron quantum numbers $`k_e`$ and $`l_e,`$ one has a spectrum of all possible $`(k_h,l_h)`$ values, and because these span a smaller energy region, the total energy spectrum will consist of mainly the electron branches, with superimposed on each of them the spectrum with the changing hole quantum numbers.

Notice also the anomalous behaviour of certain states, e.g. $`(k_h,l_h)=(2,0)`$ in the high magnetic field region. To investigate this further, we concentrated on the variation of the radial quantum number $`k_h,`$ keeping the angular momentum $`l_h`$ fixed at 0. This result is shown in Fig. 12(b) which clearly shows the occurrence of anti-crossings. These anti-crossings are due to the fact that the radial quantum number is not a good quantum number, leading to strong mixing of radial states at the anti-crossings.

## IV Conclusions

We investigated the exciton properties in a strongly simplified type II model quantum disk, with the hole located in the barrier. Strain effects were disregarded and a flat disk geometry was assumed. Because in our model system there is no geometrical confinement for the hole, the only “confinement” comes from the attraction to the electron, i.e. the Coulomb interaction energy. We solved this problem by using a Hartree-Fock mesh calculation, which allowed us to calculate the exciton energy, without an a priori knowledge of the single particle hole wavefunction.

We studied the influence of a perpendicular applied magnetic field, and found angular momentum transitions with increasing magnetic field. These are a consequence of the fact that the magnetic field pushes the hole closer to the disk, making it energetically more favourable to jump to a higher $`l_h`$ state. Varying the disk radius showed that the transitions shift to lower magnetic field for larger $`R.`$ We also found that the hole is located almost entirely inside the disk for very small disk radii.

Furthermore we investigated the transition region from type I to type II systems, by varying the confinement potential of the hole, $`V_h.`$ A striking feature here is the fact that we are dealing with type I systems up to $`V_h>24.5meV.`$ Even at $`B=0T,`$ the Coulomb attraction overcomes the potential barrier and the hole is situated inside the quantum disk. Taking a closer look at the transition region between type I and type II, showed the existence of a re-entrant behaviour of the $`l_h=0`$ state. This re-entrant behaviour is coupled with a sudden jump of the wavefunction into the disk.

The angular momentum transitions and the re-entrant behaviour should be measurable experimentally by quenching of luminescence and/or changing lineshapes.

In a last part, we studied the excitation spectrum as a function of the magnetic field. We varied the quantum numbers $`k`$ and $`l`$ for both electron and hole, and found that for every value of $`(k_e,l_e)`$ one has a spectrum consisting of the different radial and angular momentum hole states. Furthermore, taking a closer look to the varying $`k_h`$ states, with fixed $`l_h`$ and fixed electron quantum numbers, we found an anti-crossing of levels, a consequence of the fact that $`k_h`$ is not a good quantum number and therefore lifts the degeneracy.

## V Acknowledgments

K. L. J. is supported by the “Instituut voor de aanmoediging van Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie in Vlaanderen” (IWT-Vl) and B. P. is a post-doctoral researcher with the Flemish Science Foundation (FWO-Vl.). Discussions with M. Hayne, M. Tădić and A. Matulis are gratefully acknowledged. Part of this work was supported by the FWO-Vl, IUAP-IV, the “Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds van de Universiteit Antwerpen” (GOA), and the EC-project NANOMAT.

## VI Appendix: Calculation of the Hartree integral

The Hartree integral, which expresses the effect of one particle, e.g. the electron, on the other particle, e.g. the hole, is given by

$$\frac{\rho (r^{})}{|𝐫𝐫^{}|}𝑑𝐫^{}=𝑑r^{}r^{}𝑑\phi ^{}\frac{\rho (r^{})}{\sqrt{r^2+r^22rr^{}\mathrm{cos}(\phi \phi ^{})}}.$$
(12)
As we are dealing with cylindrical symmetry, we can remove the $`\phi `$-dependence. The integral over the angle becomes the complete elliptic integral of the first kind, which converts (A1) into

$$4\frac{\rho (r^{})r^{}}{r+r^{}}𝒦\left(\frac{4rr^{}}{(r+r^{})^2}\right)𝑑r^{}.$$
(13)
The radial integral has to be solved numerically. We use a polynomial approximation for the elliptic function , namely

$$𝒦(x)=[a_0+a_1x^{}+a_2x^2][b_0+b_1x^{}+b_2x^2]\mathrm{ln}(x^{}),$$
(14)
with $`x^{}=1x`$ and where the coefficients $`a_i`$ and $`b_i`$ are given in Ref. . Since this implies the appearance of a logaritmic divergence in the integrand, the commonly used trapezoidal rule will give bad results. Therefore we used another method, the so-called ‘logaritmically weighted method’ which takes into account this problem.

Generally, the following integral can be considered:

$$I(r)=_0^1𝑑xF(x)\mathrm{ln}\frac{(xr)^2}{(x+r)^2},$$
(15)
which, after transformation, becomes

$$I(r)=\underset{i=0}{\overset{N1}{}}_0^h𝑑xF(x+hi)\mathrm{ln}\frac{(x(rhi))^2}{(x+(r+hi))^2},$$
(16)
with $`h`$ the discretization step and $`N`$ the number of steps. If we replace $`F(x+hi)`$ by $`F_i+[F_{i+1}F_i]\left(x/h\right),`$ we can write (A5) as

$$I(r)=\underset{i=0}{\overset{N1}{}}\{F_iA_i(r)+[F_{i+1}F_i]C_i(r)\},$$
(17)
and the remaining problem is the calculation of the coefficients $`A_i(r)`$ and $`C_i(r).`$ The integrals which determine the coefficients can be solved exactly, which leads to the following results:

$$A_i(r)=a(h(rhi))a(h+(r+hi)),$$
(18)
with

$$a(y)=2y\mathrm{ln}y+2(hy)\mathrm{ln}(hy),$$
(19)
and

$$C_i(r)=h^1[c(h(rhi))c(h+(r+hi))]2r,$$
(20)
with

$$c(y)=\left(y(2hy)\right)\mathrm{ln}y+(hy)^2\mathrm{ln}\left(hy\right).$$
(21)


text:
# On particle production by classical backgrounds

## Abstract

The theory of quantum fields in classical backgrounds is re-examined for the cases in which the Lagrangian is quadratic in quantum fields. Various methods that describe particle production are discussed. It is found that all methods suffer from certain ambiguities, related to the choice of coordinates, gauge, or counter-terms. They also seem to be inconsistent with the conservation of energy. This suggests that such classical backgrounds may not cause particle production.

PACS: 11.10.-z
Keywords: classical background; particle production

One of the main differences between the first quantization and the second quantization (quantum field theory) is the fact that the latter is able to describe production and destruction of particles. A particularly interesting, but still experimentally unverified prediction of quantum field theory is that the vacuum may be unstable, i.e. that a nontrivial classical background may cause particle production. For example, such an effect is believed to exist in the electromagnetic  and gravitational  background. However, the concept of particle is not a fundamental concept in quantum field theory. It is well defined only for free fields, i.e. fields described by a free Lagrangian. On the other hand, production and destruction of particles may occur only if an interaction is present. Therefore, it is convenient to write the Lagrangian as $`=_{\mathrm{free}}+_{\mathrm{int}}`$ and use the interaction picture. In the general case, it is not clear how to separate the “free” part from the “interaction” part in a unique way. As we demostrate below, this is not merely a matter of convenience in some cases. Instead, the physical predictions related to particle production may depend on what we mean by “free” particles.

In this letter we study systems described by Lagrangians quadratic in a quantum field $`\varphi `$. Such Lagrangians can be written in an elegant way as

$$=\varphi ^{}J\varphi .$$
(1)
Here $`J`$ can be a c-number function or a derivative operator, but not a quantum-field operator. To clarify the meaning of $`J`$, we give a few examples. If $`\varphi `$ is a free scalar complex field, then $`J=\stackrel{}{^\mu }_\mu m^2`$. (The arrow denotes that the operator acts on the left.) The generalization of this for a curved background described by the metric $`\overline{g}_{\mu \nu }`$ is $`J=\stackrel{}{^\mu }|\overline{g}|^{1/2}_\mu m^2`$. If $`\varphi `$ is a Dirac spinor interacting with the electromagnetic background $`\overline{A}_\mu `$, then $`J=\gamma ^0[i\gamma ^\mu (_\mu +ie\overline{A}_\mu )m]`$.

The quantity $`J`$ can always be written as

$$J=J_{\mathrm{free}}+J_{\mathrm{int}},$$
(2)
which defines the interaction picture and the corresponding Feynman rules. The elementary vertex takes the form as in Fig. 1. There are three possible physical interpretations of the diagram in Fig. 1. The first interpretation is the renormalization of the free propagator. The second interpretation is scattering caused by the classical background $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$. The third interpretation is pair production induced by the classical background $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$. We argue below that the third interpretation may not be physical. Irrespective of the interpretation, the most general diagram can be represented as a combination of disconnected diagrams with two external legs. The diagram with two external legs calculated at all orders of perturbation theory is represented by Fig. 2. It is important to note that, for a given $`J`$, the separation (2) is not unique. Let us discuss a few examples.

We begin with the case $`J_{\mathrm{free}}=\stackrel{}{^\mu }_\mu `$, $`J_{\mathrm{int}}=m^2`$. In this case, the most natural interpretation of Figs. 1 and 2 is the renormalization of the propagator. Indeed, the diagrams of Fig. 2 can be easily summed , leading to the usual massive propagator represented by the left-hand side of Fig. 2. The scattering interpretation is also meaningful. If we define scattering as a deviation of the particle trajectory from the trajectory that would be realized if the particle were “free”, then it becomes clear that the mass term can be interpreted in such a way, simply because the trajectory of a massive particle is different from that of a massless particle. Pair production is also possible, in the sense that the amplitude for the production of a particle-antiparticle pair does not vanish. However, real massless particles cannot be produced simply because it is forbidden kinematically. Such a production would not be consistent with the conservation of energy.

Let us now discuss a more interesting case, in which $`J_{\mathrm{free}}=\stackrel{}{^\mu }_\mu m^2`$ (for bosons) or $`J_{\mathrm{free}}=\gamma ^0(i\gamma ^\mu _\mu m)`$ (for fermions). This corresponds to the usual definition of the “free” Lagrangian. We assume that $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$ is a non-trivial function, corresponding to a gravitational, electromagnetic, or any other background field. In this case, a natural interpretation of Figs. 1 and 2 is the scattering interpretation. The propagator-renormalization interpretation is also possible. Instead of summing the diagrams of Fig. 2, the renormalized propagator can be found more directly in the following way: (We present the method for bosons, while that for fermions is essentially the same.) The Lagrangian (1) provides that the equation of motion for $`\varphi `$ is a linear homogeneous equation, so the solution can be expanded as

$$\varphi (x)=\underset{k}{}a_kf_k(x)+b_k^{}g_k^{}(x).$$
(3)
The operators $`a_k`$, $`a_k^{}`$, $`b_k`$ and $`b_k^{}`$ satisfy the usual algebra of raising and lowering operators. This allows us to introduce the state $`|0`$ with the property $`a_k|0=b_k|0=0`$. The propagator $`G(x,y)`$ is then given by

$$G(x,y)=0|O\varphi ^{}(x)\varphi (y)|0,$$
(4)
where $`O`$ is an ordering operator, depending on which propagator we want to obtain. For example, the Feynman propagator corresponds to the time ordering.

The crucial question is whether the diagrams in Figs. 1 and 2 may correspond to pair production in the case of non-trivial $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$. The corresponding amplitude does not vanish. However, the process is kinematically forbidden again, because the production of particles increases the energy of the system. Nevertheless, the usual argument that supports the pair production is a claim that the pair production causes a backreaction on the “source” $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$, such that the energy is conserved. To avoid a possible misunderstanding, note that this backreaction cannot correspond to a recoil of a massive object that generates $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$, because the recoil only saves the conservation of the 3-momentum, not the conservation of energy. Therefore, the physical mechanism that causes this hypothetical backreaction is not clear. The backreaction is not a consequence of the basic principles of quantum field theory. If one insists on retaining the possibility of pair production, then the backreaction should be included in a vague way, by hand. If the backreaction really exists, then it is not clear why it does not exist for the case $`J_{\mathrm{int}}=m^2`$ discussed above. For example, particles could be spontaneously created in flat space-time, which would be accompained by a spontaneous change of the background metric, such that the negative gravitational energy would cancel the positive energy of the particles created. Of course, the experimental observation that particles are not spontaneously created in flat space-time is not a surprise. Our point is that, for any $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$, the existence of the backreaction does not seem to be reasonable. Therefore, the conclusion that $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$ does not cause pair production seems to be the most reasonable.

There are also other arguments against pair production, which do not rely on energy conservation. Let us pay particular attention to the case of electromagnetic background. In this case, the full Lagrangian $``$ is gauge invariant, but its separate parts $`_{\mathrm{free}}`$ and $`_{\mathrm{int}}`$ are not. Therefore, the physical results that follow from the calculation of the diagrams in Figs. 1 and 2 depend on the choice of gauge. Of course, the renormalized propagator (4) should depend on gauge. However, the number of produced particles should not depend on gauge. If the calculation is based on the diagrams in Figs. 1 and 2, then the only gauge-invariant conclusion related to pair production is that these diagrams do not describe pair production.

The particle production by an electromagnetic background can be studied in a gauge-invariant way, by calculating the effective action $`W=d^4x_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. It is represented by one-loop diagrams that can be obtained by gluing together the external legs of the diagrams in Fig. 2. The calculation can be performed by using Schwinger’s method , which is often viewed as the clearest proof that a constant background electric field causes particle production. Since $`0\mathrm{out}|0\mathrm{in}=\mathrm{exp}(iW)`$, the quantity

$$|e^{iW}|^2=e^{2\mathrm{I}\mathrm{m}W}$$
(5)
represents the probability that no actual pair creation occurs. Schwinger’s method leads to an exact expression for $`_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ for the case when the background field $`\overline{F}_{\mu \nu }`$ is constant. For this case, his method gives that $`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{eff}}=0`$ when $`\overline{𝐄}\overline{𝐁}=0`$ and $`\overline{𝐄}^2\overline{𝐁}^2<0`$, whereas $`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{eff}}>0`$ when $`\overline{𝐄}\overline{𝐁}=0`$ and $`\overline{𝐄}^2\overline{𝐁}^2>0`$. The latter case corresponds to an unstable vacuum, i.e. to particle creation. However, there are several weaknesses of the method presented in . First, the method expresses $`_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ as a certain integral over a real variable $`s`$. This $`_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is divergent and real. Of course, the divergence is expected because it is a one-loop calculation. In this method, the divergences are related to the poles of the subintegral function. Schwinger obtained the imaginary contributions in an artificial way, by replacing the contour of integration with a contour that avoids the poles. Second, a pole exists even for the case $`\overline{F}_{\mu \nu }=0`$. Schwinger removed this undesirable term by hand, by introducing an appropriate counter-term. If the addition of such counter-terms is allowed, then one can also introduce a counter-term that will cancel the contribution to $`\mathrm{Im}_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ that comes from finite $`\overline{F}_{\mu \nu }`$. Such a renormalization seems to be the most natural and leads to a stable vacuum. Third, if $`\overline{F}_{\mu \nu }(x)`$ is not constant, such that the Fourier transform $`\overline{F}_{\mu \nu }(k)`$ possesses contributions from $`k^2>4m^2`$, then $`\mathrm{Im}W`$ can be negative (at least at the lowest order of perturbation theory). Schwinger derived it (see (6.33) in ), but did not comment it. This is a pathological result because it leads to the result that the probability that no actual pair creation occurs can be larger than 1. This pathology suggests again that the contour of integration should remain on the real axis or that the counter-terms should be introduced for all imaginary contributions. It is not consistent to introduce the counter-terms only for negative contributions to $`\mathrm{Im}W`$.

At this point, it is instructive to discuss other methods that predict particle production by a background source $`J_{\mathrm{int}}`$. The most popular method is the Bogoliubov transformation. It is important to note that this method is applicable only to systems that can be described by Lagrangians of the form (1) and is equivalent to the squeezed-state method . In this method, the definition of particles is based on the identification of positive-frequency solutions to the equation of motion. The particle production described in this way is also inconsistent with energy conservation . Another problem with the Bogoliubov-transformation method is the fact that the identification of the positive-frequency solutions to the classical equations of motion depends on the choice of coordinates; different choices of the time coordinate lead to different particle contents of the same quantum state . It is often argued that this does not make the theory inconsistent, because different observers have different natural choices of the time coordinate, so different observers observe different particle contents. However, in the case of an electromagnetic background, the problem becomes even more serious, because the identification of the positive-frequency solutions depends also on the choice of gauge . In particular, for the case $`\overline{F}_{\mu \nu }=0`$, the “natural” gauge is $`\overline{A}_\mu =0`$, which defines the “natural” vacuum. By using a different gauge one can obtain that this vacuum is a many-particle state. An appropriate gauge leads to a thermal distribution of particles in the “natural” vacuum, leading to an electromagnetic analog of the Unruh effect. On the other hand, physical quantities should not depend on gauge. All this suggests that the Bogoliubov transformation is not a well-founded method for studying particle creation.

Finally, let us note that particle production by an electromagnetic background can be viewed as a tunelling process . In general, this method is also gauge dependent.

Before drawing a conclusion, let us shortly discuss a more general case, in which $`J`$ in (1) can be a quantum-field operator. Our discussion above does not refer to such a case. The most interesting example is the spinor quantum electrodynamics, in which the full quantum-field operator $`\widehat{A}_\mu `$ can be written as

$$\widehat{A}_\mu =\overline{A}_\mu +A_\mu ,$$
(6)
where $`\overline{A}_\mu `$ is a c-number background and $`A_\mu `$ is an operator with the property $`0|A_\mu |0=0`$. Such an interaction allows physical processes that are forbidden when the electromagnetic background described by $`\overline{A}_\mu `$ is not present. For example, the pair production $`\gamma e^+e^{}`$ becomes kinematically allowed because the massive object that generates $`\overline{A}_\mu `$ can recoil. Such a process has been measured  and is not in contradiction with our theoretical results that suggest that the process $`\mathrm{vacuum}e^+e^{}`$ is forbiden. The latter process has never been measured.

As we have seen, all methods that predict unstable vacuum in systems described by a Lagrangian of the form (1) suffer from certain ambiguities related to the choice of coordinates, gauge, or counter-terms. Besides, all methods have problems with the conservation of energy. This suggests that we should define particles in a general covariant and gauge-invariant way and that this definition should automatically imply that the number of particles is conserved for any system described by a Lagrangian of the form (1), where $`J`$ is not a quantum-field operator. Since it is usual to define the concept of particles by the “free” Lagrangian that conserves the number of particles, our discussion suggests that any Lagrangian of the form (1) (where $`J`$ is not a quantum-field operator) should be viewed as a “free” Lagrangian. In particular, this will provide the general covariance and gauge invariance of the concept of particles because (1) is invariant with respect to general coordinate transformations and gauge transformations. If the separation of (1) into the “free” and “interacting” part is made in the usual way, then the separate parts are not general invariant and gauge invariant. Note also that a gauge transformation $`\widehat{A}_\mu \widehat{A}_\mu +_\mu \lambda `$, where $`\lambda `$ is a c-number function, can always be written as

$`\overline{A}_\mu \overline{A}_\mu +_\mu \lambda ,`$
$`A_\mu A_\mu ,`$ (7)
which means that the interaction Lagrangian $`_{\mathrm{int}}=eA_\mu \overline{\psi }\gamma ^\mu \psi `$ is gauge invariant with respect to such gauge transformations. In addition, our discussion suggests that one has to reject a common belief that the definition of particles should be closely related to the definition of positive frequencies. The explicit definition of particles that obeys all properties suggested in this paragraph will be given elsewhere.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Croatia under Contract No. 00980102.


text:
# Master Equation for Quantum Brownian Motion Derived by Stochastic Methods

## I INTRODUCTION

Open quantum systems are of interest in condensed matter physics , quantum optics , quantum measurement theory , nonequilibrium field theory , quantum cosmology  and semiclassical gravity . An open quantum system consists of a subset of degrees of freedom, whose dynamics one is interested in, within a larger closed quantum system undergoing unitary evolution . This subsystem of interest is simply called the “system” whereas the remaining degrees of freedom constitute the “environment”. In general, the evolution of the system will be nonunitary and even non-Markovian.

A typical example of an open quantum system is the quantum Brownian motion (QBM) model, which consists of a single massive particle interacting with an infinite set of independent harmonic oscillators with a Gaussian initial state . The coupling may be linear both in the system and environment variables or may be nonlinear in some or all of these variables. The frequencies of the environment oscillators are distributed according to a prescribed spectral density function, the simplest case corresponding to the so-called ohmic environment. Part of the interest of the linear systems is that they are in many cases exactly solvable and detailed studies of different aspects of open quantum systems can be performed. One of the issues that have received much attention in recent years is environment-induced decoherence as a mechanism to understand the transition from the quantum to the classical regime .

Certain useful information for an open quantum system is contained in the master equation. The master equation is a differential equation for the time evolution of the reduced density matrix of an open quantum system. The master equation for linear coupling and ohmic environment at high temperature was first deduced by Caldeira and Leggett , it was extended to arbitrary temperature by Unruh and Zurek , and it was finally obtained for a general environment (i.e. for an arbitrary spectral density function) by Hu, Paz and Zhang using path integrals . This result was then extended to the case of nonlinear coupling by treating the interaction perturbatively up to quadratic order .

The reduced Wigner function is defined from the reduced density matrix by an integral transform . This function is similar in many aspects to a distribution function in phase space, although it is not necessarily positive definite, and the dynamical equation it satisfies is similar to the Fokker-Planck equation for classical statistical systems . This equation is, of course, entirely equivalent to the master equation for the reduced density matrix and we will often also refer to it as the master equation. Halliwell and Yu exploited the fact that the Wigner function for a linear closed quantum system evolves according to the classical equations of motion to obtain the equation satisfied by the reduced Wigner function . The reduced density matrix has been used to study decoherence induced by the environment . The Wigner function has also been used in studies of emergence of classicality induced by an environment , especially in quantum cosmology .

Langevin type of equations  as a suitable tool to study the semiclassical limit have been used recently in semiclassical gravity and cosmology . In inflationary cosmology they have been used to describe the stochastic effect on the inflaton field  or the stochastic behavior of large-scale gravitational perturbations , which is important for cosmological structure formation. So far, in the functional approach the Langevin equation has been mainly restricted to describe the classical or semiclassical limit. See, however, ref.  for a quantum version of the Langevin equation in operator language.

A closer look at the influence functional, nevertheless, reveals that a formal Langevin equation can be extracted from this functional independently of the existence of a classical limit at least for quadratic influence actions. This Langevin equation is used to show that the reduced Wigner function can be written as a formal phase-space distribution function associated to a stochastic process  (as earlier suggested in ref. ). The master equation governing its time evolution is then deduced as the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation.

The plan of the paper is the following. In sec. II we briefly summarize the essential concepts and results of the influence functional formalism for linear open quantum systems. In sec. III we show how the reduced Wigner function for the system can be expressed as an average over the different realizations of a stochastic process. This result is used in sec. IV to give an alternative derivation of the master equation for a general environment. Finally, we summarize and discuss our results in sec. V.

## II INFLUENCE FUNCTIONAL FORMALISM AND MASTER EQUATION FOR LINEAR OPEN QUANTUM SYSTEMS

Let us first review a QBM model as an example of linear open quantum system. We consider a harmonic oscillator of mass $`M`$, the “system”, coupled to a bath of independent harmonic oscillators of mass $`m`$, the “environment”. For simplicity, let us assume that the system and environment are linearly coupled. The action for the whole set of degrees of freedom is defined by:

$$S[x,\{q_j\}]=S[x]+S[\{q_j\}]+S_{int}[x,\{q_j\}]\text{,}$$
(1)
where the terms on the right-hand side correspond to the action of the system, the environment and the interaction term respectively. They are given by:

$$S[x]=𝑑t(\frac{1}{2}M\dot{x}^2\frac{1}{2}M\mathrm{\Omega }^2x^2)\text{,}$$
(2)
$$S[\{q_j\}]=\underset{j}{}𝑑t(\frac{1}{2}m\dot{q}_j^2\frac{1}{2}m\omega _j^2q_j^2)\text{,}$$
(3)
$$S_{int}[x,\{q_j\}]=\underset{j}{}c_j𝑑tx(t)q_j(t)=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\omega \frac{2m\omega }{\pi c(\omega )}I(\omega )𝑑tx(t)q(t;\omega )\text{,}$$
(4)
where we introduced the spectral density $`I(\omega )=_j\pi c_j^2(2m\omega _j)^1\delta (\omega \omega _j)`$ in the last equality, $`c(\omega )`$ and $`q(t;\omega )`$ are functions such that $`c(\omega _j)=c_j`$ and $`q(t;\omega _j)=q_j(t)`$, $`c_j`$ being system-environment coupling parameters, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and $`\omega _j`$ are, respectively, the system and environment oscillator frequencies. When no special form is assumed for the spectral density $`I(\omega )`$, this is usually referred to as a general environment. One of the most common particular cases is the so-called Ohmic environment, defined by $`I(\omega )\omega `$ (some high frequency cut-off may be sometimes naturally introduced).

The reduced density matrix for an open quantum system is defined from the density matrix $`\rho `$ of the whole system by tracing out the environment degrees of freedom

$$\rho _r(x_f,x_f^{},t_f)=\underset{j}{}dq_j\rho (x_f,\{q_j\},x_f^{},\{q_j\},t_f)=𝑑x_i𝑑x_i^{}J(x_f,x_f^{},t_f;x_i,x_i^{},t_i)\rho _r(x_i,x_i^{},t_i)\text{,}$$
(5)
where the last equation gives the evolution of the reduced density matrix by means of the propagator $`J`$, which is defined in a path integral representation by

$$J(x_f,x_f^{},t_f;x_i,x_i^{},t_i)=\underset{x(t_i)=x_i}{\overset{x(t_f)=x_f}{}}𝒟x\underset{x^{}(t_i)=x_i^{}}{\overset{x^{}(t_f)=x_f^{}}{}}𝒟x^{}e^{i(S[x]S[x^{}]+S_{IF}[x,x^{}])/\mathrm{}}\text{,}$$
(6)
where $`S_{IF}[x,x^{}]`$ is the influence action introduced by Feynman and Vernon . When the system and the environment are initially uncorrelated, i.e., when the initial density matrix factorizes ($`\widehat{\rho }(t_i)=\widehat{\rho }_r(t_i)\widehat{\rho }_e(t_i)`$, where $`\widehat{\rho }_r(t_i)`$ and $`\widehat{\rho }_e(t_i)`$ mean, respectively, the density matrix operators of the system and the environment at the initial time) the influence functional, defined by $`F[x,x^{}]=\mathrm{exp}(iS_{IF}[x,x^{}])/\mathrm{}`$, can be expressed in the following way:

$`F[x,x^{}]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}{\displaystyle }dq_j^{(f)}dq_j^{(i)}dq_j^{(i)}{\displaystyle \underset{q_j(t_i)=q_j^{(i)}}{\overset{q_j(t_f)=q_j^{(f)}}{}}}𝒟q_j{\displaystyle \underset{q_j^{}(t_i)=q_j^{(i)}}{\overset{q_j^{}(t_f)=q_j^{(f)}}{}}}𝒟q_j^{}\mathrm{exp}[{\displaystyle \frac{i}{\mathrm{}}}(S[\{q_j\}]S[\{q_j^{}\}]+S[x,\{q_j\}]`$ (8)
$`S[x^{},\{q_j^{}\}])]\rho _e(\{q_j^{(i)}\},\{q_j^{(i)}\},t_i)\text{.}`$
When the initial density matrix for the environment $`\rho _e(\{q_j^{(i)}\},\{q_j^{(i)}\},t_i)`$ is Gaussian, the path integrals can be exactly performed and one obtains :

$$S_{IF}[x,x^{}]=2_{t_i}^{t_f}𝑑s_{t_i}^s𝑑s^{}\mathrm{\Delta }(s)D(s,s^{})X(s^{})+\frac{i}{2}_{t_i}^{t_f}𝑑s_{t_i}^{t_f}𝑑s^{}\mathrm{\Delta }(s)N(s,s^{})\mathrm{\Delta }(s^{})\text{,}$$
(9)
where $`X(s)(x(s)+x^{}(s))/2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }(s)x^{}(s)x(s)`$. The kernels $`D(s,s^{})`$ and $`N(s,s^{})`$ are called the dissipation and noise kernel, respectively.

For environments consisting of an infinite number of oscillators it is especially convenient to rewrite the first term on the right-hand side of Eq. (9) as

$$_{t_i}^{t_f}𝑑s_{t_i}^{t_f}𝑑s^{}\mathrm{\Delta }(s)H_{bare}(s,s^{})X(s^{})\text{,}$$
(10)
where we defined $`H_{bare}(s,s^{})`$ as formally equivalent to $`2D(s,s^{})\theta (ss^{})`$. Being the product of two distributions the latter expression is not well defined in general and suitable regularization and renormalization may be required; see  for details. The local divergences present in $`H_{bare}(s,s^{})=H(s,s^{})+H_{div}\delta (ss^{})`$ can be canceled by suitable counterterms $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{div}`$ in the bare frequency of the system $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{\Omega }_{ren}+\mathrm{\Omega }_{div}`$. From now on we will consider that this infinite renormalization, if necessary, has already been performed so that both $`\mathrm{\Omega }_{ren}`$ and $`H(s,s^{})`$ are free of divergences.

From Eqs. (5) and (6) a differential equation for the system’s reduced density matrix known as the master equation can be derived. The expression for a general environment was first obtained by Hu, Paz and Zhang using a path integral approach  (see  for a slightly different derivation):

$`i\mathrm{}{\displaystyle \frac{\rho _r}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{}^2}{2M}}\left({\displaystyle \frac{^2}{x^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{^2}{x^2}}\right)\rho _r+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}M\mathrm{\Omega }^2(x^2x^2)\rho _r+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}M\delta \mathrm{\Omega }^2(t)(x^2x^2)\rho _r`$ (12)
$`i\mathrm{}A(t)(xx^{})\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{x}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{x^{}}}\right)\rho _r+\mathrm{}B(t)(xx^{})\left({\displaystyle \frac{}{x}}+{\displaystyle \frac{}{x^{}}}\right)\rho _riMC(t)(xx^{})^2\rho _r\text{,}`$
where the functions $`\delta \mathrm{\Omega }^2(t)`$, $`A(t)`$, $`B(t)`$ and $`C(t)`$ represent a frequency shift, a dissipation factor and two diffusive factors, respectively. For explicit expressions of these functions see sec. IV. An alternative representation for the system reduced density matrix is the reduced Wigner function $`W_r(X,p,t)`$ defined as

$$W_r(X,p,t)=\frac{1}{2\pi \mathrm{}}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\mathrm{\Delta }e^{ip\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{}}\rho _r(X\mathrm{\Delta }/2,X+\mathrm{\Delta }/2,t)\text{.}$$
(13)
It follows immediately that the master equation (12) can be written in the following equivalent form:

$$\frac{W_r}{t}=\{H_R,W_r\}_{PB}+2A(t)\frac{(pW_r)}{p}+\mathrm{}B(t)\frac{^2W_r}{qp}+\mathrm{}MC(t)\frac{^2W_r}{p^2}\text{,}$$
(14)
where $`\{H_R,W_r\}_{PB}(p/M)W_r/q+M\mathrm{\Omega }_R^2(t)qW_r/p`$ with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_R^2(t)=\mathrm{\Omega }^2+\delta \mathrm{\Omega }^2(t)`$. This equation was directly derived by Halliwell and Yu  exploiting the fact that the Wigner function for the whole closed quantum system evolves according to the classical equations of motion. Note that Eq. (14) is formally similar to the Fokker-Planck equation for a distribution function.

## III STOCHASTIC FORMAL EXPRESSION FOR THE REDUCED WIGNER FUNCTION

In this section we show that the reduced Wigner function can be written as a formal distribution function for some stochastic process (see ref.  for a detailed exposition). This will be the key starting point in the derivation of the master equation given in the next section.

In order to find an explicit expression for the reduced density matrix (5) at a time $`t_f`$, we need to compute the path integrals appearing in Eq. (6) for the reduced density matrix propagator. From now on we will consider $`\mathrm{}=1`$. After integrating the system action by parts and performing the Gaussian path integral for $`\mathrm{\Delta }(t)`$ with $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{f\text{ }}`$ fixed, we obtain

$$_{X_i}^{X_f}𝒟X_{\mathrm{\Delta }_i}^{\mathrm{\Delta }_f}𝒟\mathrm{\Delta }e^{i\mathrm{\Delta }LX}e^{\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{\Delta }N\mathrm{\Delta }}=\left(det\frac{N}{2\pi }\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}_{X_i}^{X_f}𝒟Xe^{\frac{1}{2}(LX)N^1(LX)}\text{,}$$
(15)
where $`L(t,t^{})M\left(\frac{d^2}{dt^2}+\mathrm{\Omega }_{ren}^2\right)\delta (tt^{})+H(t,t^{})`$. Taking into account the surface terms arising from the integration by parts of the system action and definition (13) for the reduced Wigner function, the result of the integration over $`\mathrm{\Delta }_i`$ gives

$$\rho _r(X_f\mathrm{\Delta }_f/2,X_f+\mathrm{\Delta }_f/2,t_f)=2\pi \left(det\frac{N}{2\pi }\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑X_i_{X_i}^{X_f}𝒟Xe^{\frac{1}{2}(LX)N^1(LX)}e^{iM\dot{X}_f\mathrm{\Delta }_f}W_r(X_i,M\dot{X}_i,t_i)\text{.}$$
(16)
The next step to perform is the following functional change:

$$X(t)\left\{X_i=X(t_i)\text{}p_iM\dot{X}_i=M\dot{X}(t_i)\text{}\xi (t)=(LX)(t)\text{ }\right\}\text{.}$$
(17)
Note that with this change the function $`X(t)`$ gets substituted by the initial conditions $`(X_i,p_i)`$ and the function $`\xi (t)`$ in the path integration. It is important to note that at this point the function $`\xi (t)`$ is not a stochastic process but just a function over which a path integral is performed. The functional change (17) is invertible as can be explicitly seen:

$$\left\{X_i\text{}p_i\text{}\xi (t)\right\}X(t)=X_o(t)+_{t_i}^t𝑑t^{}G_{ret}(t,t^{})\xi (t^{})\text{,}$$
(18)
where $`G_{ret}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })`$ is the retarded (i.e., $`G_{ret}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })=0`$ for $`t^{}t^{\prime \prime }`$) Green function for the linear integro-differential operator associated to the kernel $`L(t,t^{})`$, and $`X_{inh}(t)=`$ $`_{t_i}^t𝑑t^{}G_{ret}(t,t^{})\xi (t^{})`$ is a solution of the inhomogeneous equation $`(LX_{inh})(t)=\xi (t)`$ with initial conditions $`X_{inh}(t_i)=0`$ and $`X_{inh}(t^{})/t^{}|_{t^{}=t_i}=0`$. On the other hand, $`X_o(t)`$ is a solution of the homogeneous equation $`(LX_o)(t)=0`$, with initial conditions $`X_o(t_i)=X_i`$ and $`\dot{X}(t_i)=p_i/M`$. Since the change is linear, the Jacobian functional determinant will be a constant (this can be clearly seen by skeletonizing the path integral). After performing the functional change, we obtain

$$\rho _r(X_f\mathrm{\Delta }_f/2,X_f+\mathrm{\Delta }_f/2,t_f)=K_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑X_i_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑p_i𝒟\xi \delta (X(t_f)X_f)e^{\frac{1}{2}\xi N^1\xi }e^{iM\dot{X}(t_f)\mathrm{\Delta }_f}W_r(X_i,p_i,t_i)\text{,}$$
(19)
where the delta function $`\delta (X(t_f)X_f)`$ was introduced to restrict the functional integral $`𝒟\xi `$ with free ends, in order to take into account the restriction on the final points of the allowed paths for the integral $`^{X_f}𝒟X`$ appearing in Eq. (16). The contribution from the Jacobian has been included in the constant $`K`$. By demanding the reduced density matrix to be normalized, i.e., that $`Tr\rho _r(t_f)=1`$, provided that the initial Wigner function is properly normalized, this constant can be determined to be

$$K=\left[𝒟\xi e^{\frac{1}{2}\xi N^1\xi }\right]^1=\left[det(2\pi N)\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}\text{.}$$
(20)
Finally, using the definition (13) for the Wigner function and the fact that $`(2\pi )^1_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑\mathrm{\Delta }_fe^{ip_f\mathrm{\Delta }_f}e^{iM\dot{X}(t_f)\mathrm{\Delta }_f}=\delta (M\dot{X}(t_f)p_f)`$, we get an expression for the reduced Wigner function

$$W_r(X_f,p_f,t_f)=K_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑X_i_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑p_i𝒟\xi \delta (X(t_f)X_f)\delta (M\dot{X}(t_f)p_f)e^{\frac{1}{2}\xi N^1\xi }W_r(X_i,p_i,t_i)\text{,}$$
(21)
which can be written in the following suggestive way:

$$W_r(X_f,p_f,t_f)=\delta (X(t_f)X_f)\delta (M\dot{X}(t_f)p_f)_\xi _{X_i,p_i}\text{,}$$
(22)
where

$`\mathrm{}_\xi `$ $``$ $`\left[det(2\pi N)\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}{\displaystyle 𝒟\xi \mathrm{}e^{\frac{1}{2}\xi N^1\xi }\text{,}}`$ (23)
$`\mathrm{}_{X_i,p_i}`$ $``$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑X_i{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑p_i\mathrm{}W_r(X_i,p_i,t_i)\text{.}`$ (24)
Thus the reduced Wigner function can be interpreted as an average over a Gaussian stochastic process $`\xi (t)`$ with $`\xi (t)_\xi =0`$ and $`\xi (t)\xi (t^{})_\xi =N(t,t^{})`$ as well as an average over the initial conditions characterized by a distribution function $`W_r(X_i,p_i,t_i)`$. It is only after formally interpreting $`\xi (t)`$ as a stochastic process characterized by Eq. (23) that the equation defining $`\xi (t)`$ in the functional change (17)

$$(LX)(t)=\xi (t)\text{,}$$
(25)
can be regarded as a Langevin equation. We insist that, in general, Eq. (25) is not meant to describe the actual trajectories of the system, but it should rather be regarded as a formal tool. We should also remark that $`X(t_f)`$ and $`\dot{X}(t_f)`$ in Eq. (22) correspond to solutions of the Langevin equation (25) for a given realization of $`\xi (t)`$, and that $`X_f`$ and $`p_f`$ are coordinates of a point in phase space.

Note, in addition, that although $`W_r(X_i,p_i,t_i)`$ is real, which follows from the hermiticity of the density matrix, and properly normalized, in general it is not positive everywhere and, thus, cannot be considered as a probability distribution. The fact that the Wigner function cannot be interpreted as a phase space probability density is crucial since most of the nonclassical features of the quantum state are tightly related to the Wigner function having negative values. For instance, a coherent superposition state is typically characterized by the Wigner function presenting strong oscillations with negative values in the minima , which are closely connected to interference terms.

## IV FROM LANGEVIN TO FOKKER-PLANCK: DERIVATION OF THE MASTER EQUATION

As mentioned above there is a simple one-to-one correspondence between any density matrix and the associated Wigner function introduced in (13). Taking this correspondence into account, the equation satisfied by the reduced Wigner function is equivalent to the master equation satisfied by the reduced density matrix.

Equation (22) shows that the reduced Wigner function can be interpreted as a formal distribution in phase space. By deriving it with respect to time and using the Langevin-type equation in (25), one can obtain a Fokker-Planck differential equation describing the time evolution of the system’s reduced Wigner function.

The derivation of the Fokker-Planck equation from the Langevin equation with local dissipation is well understood (see ref. ). However, in our case the existence of nonlocal dissipation makes it convenient to review the main steps. Let us begin by computing $`W_r/t`$ from expression (22),

$`{\displaystyle \frac{W_r(X,p,t)}{t}}`$ $`=`$ $`\dot{X}(t)\delta ^{}(X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi _{X_i,p_i}+\delta (X(t)X)M\ddot{X}(t)\delta ^{}(M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi _{X_i,p_i}`$ (26)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{p}{M}}{\displaystyle \frac{W_r(X,p,t)}{X}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{p}}\delta (X(t)X)M\ddot{X}(t)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi _{X_i,p_i}\text{,}`$ (27)
where the fact that $`\dot{X}(t)`$, $`/X(t)`$ and $`/\dot{X}(t)`$ may be replaced by $`p/M`$, $`/X`$ and $`/p`$ respectively, since they are multiplying the delta functions, was used in the second equality. Let us now concentrate on the expectation value appearing in the last term and recall the expectation values defined in (23)-(24). We will consider the Langevin-type equation

$$(LX)(t^{})=\xi (t^{})\text{,}$$
(28)
corresponding to the functional change (17) and substitute the corresponding expression for $`M\ddot{X}(t)`$ so that the last expectation value in (27) can be written as

$$M\mathrm{\Omega }_{ren}^2XW_r(X,p,t)+\left(_{t_i}^t𝑑tH(t,t^{})X(t^{})+\xi (t)\right)\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi _{X_i,p_i}\text{.}$$
(29)
Any solution of Eq. (28) can be written as

$$X(t^{})=X_h(t^{})+_t^{}^t𝑑t^{\prime \prime }\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\xi (t^{\prime \prime })\text{,}$$
(30)
where $`X_h(t^{})`$ is a solution of the homogeneous equation $`(LX)(t^{})=0`$ such that $`X_h(t)=X`$, $`\dot{X}_h(t)=p/M`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })`$ is the advanced (i.e., $`\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })=0`$ for $`t^{}t^{\prime \prime }`$) Green function for the linear integro-differential operator associated to the kernel $`L(t,t^{})`$. The particular solution of the inhomogeneous Eq. (28)

$$\stackrel{~}{X}_{inh}(t^{})=_t^{}^t𝑑t^{\prime \prime }\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\xi (t^{\prime \prime })$$
(31)
has boundary conditions $`\stackrel{~}{X}_{inh}(t)=0`$, $`\stackrel{~}{X}_{inh}(t^{})/t^{}|_{t^{}=t}=0`$. Both $`X_h(t^{})`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })`$ can be expressed in terms of the homogeneous solutions $`u_1(t^{})`$ and $`u_2(t^{})`$, which satisfy $`u_1(t_i)=1`$, $`u_1(t)=0`$ and $`u_2(t_i)=0`$, $`u_2(t)=1`$ respectively:

$`X_h(t^{})`$ $`=`$ $`X\left(u_2(t^{}){\displaystyle \frac{\dot{u}_2(t)}{\dot{u}_1(t)}}u_1(t^{})\right)+{\displaystyle \frac{(p/M)}{\dot{u}_1(t)}}u_1(t^{})\text{,}`$ (32)
$`\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}{\displaystyle \frac{u_1(t^{})u_2(t^{\prime \prime })u_2(t^{})u_1(t^{\prime \prime })}{\dot{u}_1(t^{\prime \prime })u_2(t^{\prime \prime })\dot{u}_2(t^{\prime \prime })u_1(t^{\prime \prime })}}\theta (t^{\prime \prime }t^{})\text{.}`$ (33)
We use the advanced propagator so that there is no dependence on the initial conditions at time $`t^{}=t_i`$ coming from the homogeneous solution but just on the final conditions at time $`t^{}=t`$, i.e., on those the Fokker-Planck equation is written in terms of. Using expression (30) the first term within the expectation value appearing in Eq. (29) can be reexpressed as

$`{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑tH(t,t^{})X(t^{})\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi _{X_i,p_i}`$ (34)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{}H(t,t^{})X_h(t^{})W_r(X,p,t)+{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{}{\displaystyle _t^{}^t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime }H(t,t^{})\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\xi (t^{\prime \prime })\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi _{X_i,p_i}\text{.}`$ (35)
The first term on the right-hand side can in turn be written as

$$\left(M\delta \mathrm{\Omega }(t)X+2A(t)p\right)W_r(X,p,t)\text{,}$$
(36)
where

$`\delta \mathrm{\Omega }(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{M}}{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{}H(t,t^{})[u_2(t^{})(\dot{u}_2(t)/\dot{u}_1(t))u_1(t^{})]\text{,}`$ (37)
$`A(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(M\dot{u}_1(t))^1{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{}H(t,t^{})u_1(t^{})\text{.}`$ (38)
In order to find an expression for $`\xi (t^{})\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi `$ we use Novikov’s formula for Gaussian stochastic processes , which corresponds essentially to use (23) and functionally integrate by parts with respect to $`\xi (t)`$,

$$\xi (t^{})F(t;\xi ]_\xi =_{t_i}^t𝑑t^{\prime \prime }N(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\delta F(t;\xi ]/\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })_\xi \text{.}$$
(39)
We then obtain the following expression:

$`\xi (t^{})\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}dt^{\prime \prime \prime }{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}dt^{\prime \prime }N(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })({\displaystyle \frac{\delta X(t^{\prime \prime \prime })}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\delta X(t^{\prime \prime \prime })}}`$ (41)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \dot{X}(t^{\prime \prime \prime })}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}{\displaystyle \frac{\delta }{\delta \dot{X}(t^{\prime \prime \prime })}})\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi `$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}dt^{\prime \prime \prime }{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}dt^{\prime \prime }N(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\delta (t^{\prime \prime \prime }t)({\displaystyle \frac{\delta X(t^{\prime \prime \prime })}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{X}}+M{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \dot{X}(t^{\prime \prime \prime })}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{p}})`$ (43)
$`\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi `$
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}dt^{\prime \prime }N(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })({\displaystyle \frac{\delta X(t)}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{X}}+M{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \dot{X}(t)}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{p}})`$ (45)
$`\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi \text{,}`$
where we used again the presence of the delta functions to substitute the functional derivatives $`\delta /\delta X(t^{\prime \prime \prime })`$ and $`\delta /\delta \dot{X}(t^{\prime \prime \prime })`$ by $`\delta (t^{\prime \prime \prime }t)/X`$ and $`\delta (t^{\prime \prime \prime }t)M/p`$, respectively, in the second equality. Functionally differentiating with respect to $`\xi (t^{\prime \prime })`$ expression (18) for $`X(t)`$ and analogously for $`\dot{X}(t)`$ we get

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta X(t^{})}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}`$ $`=`$ $`G_{ret}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\text{,}`$ (47)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta \dot{X}(t^{})}{\delta \xi (t^{\prime \prime })}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{}{t^{}}}G_{ret}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\text{,}`$ (48)
which after substitution into (45) leads to

$$\xi (t^{})\delta (X(t)X)\delta (M\dot{X}(t)p)_\xi =_{t_i}^t𝑑t^{\prime \prime }N(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })\left(G_{ret}(t,t^{\prime \prime })\frac{}{X}+M\frac{G_{ret}(t,t^{\prime \prime })}{t^{}}\frac{}{p}\right)W_r(X,p,t)\text{.}$$
(49)
The retarded Green function can also be expressed in terms of the solutions of the homogeneous equation $`u_1(t)`$ and $`u_2(t)`$, which were previously introduced, as

$$G_{ret}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime })=\frac{1}{M}\frac{u_1(t^{})u_2(t^{\prime \prime })u_2(t^{})u_1(t^{\prime \prime })}{\dot{u}_1(t^{\prime \prime })u_2(t^{\prime \prime })\dot{u}_2(t^{\prime \prime })u_1(t^{\prime \prime })}\theta (t^{}t^{\prime \prime })\text{.}$$
(50)
Note that it is important to use now the expression in terms of the retarded propagator $`G_{ret}`$ and the initial conditions $`X_i`$ and $`p_i`$ (at time $`t^{}=t_i`$), since the “final” conditions $`X(t)`$ and $`M\dot{X}(t)`$ depend on $`\xi (t^{\prime \prime })`$ (for $`t^{\prime \prime }<t`$). Putting all the terms together, i.e., (29), (35) and (49), we reach the final expression for (27):

$$\frac{W_r}{t}=\{H_R,W_r\}_{PB}+2A(t)\frac{(pW_r)}{p}+B(t)\frac{^2W_r}{Xp}+MC(t)\frac{^2W_r}{p^2}\text{,}$$
(51)
where $`\delta \mathrm{\Omega }(t)`$ and $`A(t)`$ are given by Eqs. (37) and (38), and

$`B(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime \prime }N(t,t^{\prime \prime \prime })G_{ret}(t,t^{\prime \prime \prime }){\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{}H(t,t^{}){\displaystyle _t^{}^t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime }\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime }){\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime \prime }N(t^{\prime \prime },t^{\prime \prime \prime })G_{ret}(t,t^{\prime \prime \prime })\text{,}`$ (52)
$`C(t)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime \prime }N(t,t^{\prime \prime \prime }){\displaystyle \frac{G_{ret}(t,t^{\prime \prime \prime })}{t}}{\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{}H(t,t^{}){\displaystyle _t^{}^t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime }\stackrel{~}{G}_{adv}(t^{},t^{\prime \prime }){\displaystyle _{t_i}^t}𝑑t^{\prime \prime \prime }N(t^{\prime \prime },t^{\prime \prime \prime }){\displaystyle \frac{G_{ret}(t,t^{\prime \prime \prime })}{t^{\prime \prime }}}\text{.}`$ (53)
The last two expressions were obtained by combining the second term within the expectation value appearing in (29) and the second term on the right-hand side of Eq. (35). It should be taken into account that if we put back the $`\mathrm{}`$’s, there appears one with every noise kernel in Eqs. (52) and (53).

The expressions (37), (38), (52) and (53) for $`\delta \mathrm{\Omega }(t)`$, $`A(t)`$, $`B(t)`$ and $`C(t)`$, respectively, coincide exactly with those of ref. , which are in turn equivalent to those obtained in ref. . Thus, this derivation of the master equation based on a stochastic description for the system is an alternative to those given previously  and is, of course, in agreement with their results.

## V DISCUSSION

In this paper we have considered the stochastic description of a linear open quantum system to give an alternative derivation of the corresponding master equation. We have shown that the reduced Wigner function can be written as a formal distribution function for a stochastic process characterized by a Langevin-type equation. The master equation has then been deduced as the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation for the stochastic process. This derivation can be extended to the case of nonlinear interaction between system and environment by computing perturbatively the influence action up to quadratic order and even to the case of a general potential for the system .

It should be pointed out that whereas one can derive the Fokker-Planck equation from the Langevin equation, the opposite is not possible in general. One can always consider Langevin equations with stochastic sources characterized by different noise kernels which, nevertheless, lead to the same Fokker-Planck equation and, thus, the same master equation. This can be argued from the expressions obtained in the derivation of the Fokker-Planck equation. Let us consider, for simplicity, the situation corresponding to local dissipation. A local contribution to the noise gives no contribution to $`B(t)`$, but it does contribute to $`C(t)`$ as can be seen from Eqs. (52) and (53) taking into account that $`G_{ret}(t,t)=0`$ and $`G_{ret}(t^{},t)/t^{}|_{t^{}=t}=M^1`$. Thus, one can always choose any noise kernel that gives the desired $`B(t)`$ and then add the appropriate local contribution to the noise kernel to get the desired $`C(t)`$ keeping $`B(t)`$ fixed. Note that changing the noise kernel does not change $`A(t)`$. To illustrate the fact that there exist different noise kernels giving the same $`B(t)`$, as was stated above, one may consider the particular case corresponding to the weak dissipation limit so that $`G_{ret}(t,t^{})(M\mathrm{\Omega })^1\mathrm{sin}\mathrm{\Omega }(tt^{})\theta (tt^{})`$. To see that a different $`\stackrel{~}{N}(t,t^{})`$ giving the same $`B(t)`$ as $`N(t,t^{})`$ exists reduces then to show that there is at least one nontrivial function $`\nu (s,t)=`$ $`\stackrel{~}{N}(t,t^{})N(t,t^{})`$ (with $`s=tt^{}`$) such that for any $`t`$ $`_0^t𝑑s\mathrm{sin}(\mathrm{\Omega }s)\nu (s,t)=0`$, which can be shown to be the case.

The fact that different Langevin equations lead to the same master equation reflects that the former contains more information than the latter. To be more precise, what we showed was that a Langevin equation contains in general more information that the corresponding Fokker-Planck equation. To extend this assertion to the master equation, one should make sure that different Langevin equations leading to the same Fokker-Planck equation can be obtained from an influence functional. Indeed this can be shown to be the case provided that one considers general Gaussian initial states for the environment. The inequivalence between the Langevin equation and the master equation can be qualitatively understood in the following way. In the influence functional it is only the evolution of the environment degrees of freedom that is traced out. Of course, having integrated over all the possible quantum histories for the environment, no correlations in the environment can be obtained. Nevertheless, since the system is interacting with the environment, non-Markovian correlations for the system at different times may in general persist. On the other hand, when considering either the reduced density matrix or its propagator, also the system evolution, except for the final state, is integrated out. Consequently, information on non-Markovian time correlations for the system is no longer available. Thus, only when the system’s reduced dynamics is Markovian, i.e. the influence functional is local in time, we expect that the Langevin equation and the master equation contain the same information. In particular, for a Gaussian stochastic source, as in our case, the Langevin equation contains the information about the system correlations at different times, which the Fokker-Planck equation cannot in general account for. Only in the case in which the dynamics generated by the Langevin equation is Markovian one can compute the correlation functions just from the solutions of the Fokker-Planck equation or, equivalently, the master equation for the propagator $`J(x_2,x_2^{},t_2;x_1,x_1^{},t_1)`$; see Eq. (6). The key point is the fact that the propagator for the reduced density matrix only factorizes when the influence action is local. See ref.  for a detailed argument on this point.

It is important to note that for a closed quantum system the evolution determined by the time evolution operators $`U(t_2,t_1)`$ obtained from the Schrödinger equation is always unitary and, thus, also Markovian. That is why the Schrödinger equation suffices to get the correlation functions for a closed quantum system. On the contrary, for an open quantum system the evolution is nonunitary and, provided the influence action is nonlocal, not even Markovian.

Finally, we should insist on the fact that, although we have exploited the formal description of open quantum systems in terms of stochastic processes, a classical statistical interpretation is not always possible. Thus, although the Wigner function is a real and properly normalized function providing a distribution for the initial conditions of our formal stochastic processes, it is not a true probability distribution function in the sense that it is not positive definite in general. In fact, this property is crucial for the existence of quantum coherence for the system. Nevertheless, even though the Langevin equation does not in general describe actual classical trajectories of the system, it is still a very useful tool to compute quantum correlation functions  or even as an intermediate step to derive the master equation.

###### Acknowledgements.

We are grateful to Rosario Martín for interesting discussions and to Daniel Arteaga for a careful reading of the manuscript. This work has been partially supported by the CICYT Research Project No. AEN98-0431 and by Fundación Antorchas under grant A-13622/1-21. E. C. acknowledges support from Universidad de Buenos Aires, CONICET and Fundación Antorchas.