Master Equation for Electromagnetic Dissipation and Decoherence of Density Matrix
Abstract
We set up a forward--backward path integral for a point particle in a bath of photons to derive a master equation for the density matrix which describes electromagnetic dissipation and decoherence. As an application, we recalculate the Weisskopf-Wigner formula for the natural line width of an atomic state at zero temperature and find, in addition, the temperature broadening caused by the decoherence term.
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