Stochastic Liouville Equations

Abstract

When a dynamical system has a perturbation which is considered as a stochastic process, the Liouville equation for the system in the phase space or the space of quantum-mechanical density operators is a sort of stochastic equation. The ensemble average of its formal integral defines the relaxation operator Φ(t) of the system. By the definition Φ(t) = exp K(t), the cumulant function K(t) may be introduced. Some general properties are first discussed for a simple example of an oscillator with random frequency modulation and then, concepts of slow and fast modulation are considered. These concepts can be generalized to more general types of stochastic Liouville equations. It is shown that by various possibilities of defining generalized exponential functions, this approach may be useful to understand some essential features of the problem from an unified point of view.