Many unstable particles from an open quantum systems perspective

Abstract

We postulate a master equation, written in the language of creation and annihilation operators, as a candidate for unambiguous quantum mechanical description of unstable particles. We have found Kraus representation for the evolution driven by this master equation and study its properties. Both Schroedinger and Heisenberg picture of the system evolution are presented. We show that the resulting time evolution leads to exponential decay law. Moreover, we analyse mixing of particle flavours and we show that it can lead to flavour oscillation phenomenon.