The interplay between classical uncertainty in the initial state of the bath and quantum uncertainty in the system state plays an important role in the dynamics of open quantum systems. These contributions intermix and are difficult to separate in standard approaches to reduced system dynamics, complicating the generalization of tools from classical statistical mechanics. By describing quantum states as classical probability distributions on a quantum state space, classical and quantum sources of uncertainty can be rigorously separated. Furthermore, dynamical flow on this space obeys analagous properties to classical mechanics enabling the systematic generalization of tools from classical statistical mechanics to quantum systems. Examples of these generalizations will be described as will the relationship between the state space distribution formalism and several quantum propagation techniques.

Separating quantum and classical uncertainty in open systems enables the systematic generalization of classical tools

256th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.