Rotational friction and diffusion of quantum rotors

Abstract

We present the Markovian quantum master equation describing rotational decoherence, friction, diffusion, and thermalization of planar, linear, and asymmetric rotors in contact with a thermal environment. It describes how an arbitrary initial rotation state decoheres and evolves toward a Gibbs-like thermal ensemble, as we illustrate numerically for the linear and the planar top, and it yields the expected rotational Fokker-Planck equation of Brownian motion in the semiclassical limit.