Abstract
We study the time evolution of wave packets on coupled energy levels including the irreversible effect of spontaneous emission. As a test case we choose a simple two-state level-crossing problem of the Landau-Zener type. The numerical treatment of this situation is demanding, and we explore two approaches based on different views of the quantum-mechanical dynamics. First, we solve the time evolution of the wave packet using the traditional master equation giving directly the ensemble averages. Second, we use the recently developed Monte Carlo simulation method, which gives the individual members of an ensemble of quantum states undergoing spontaneous quantum jumps. The results are compared and found to agree when large enough ensembles are used. We discuss the computational requirements for the two methods and we find both quite demanding but qualitatively different.
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