Model Hamiltonians of open quantum optical systems: Evolvement from hermiticity to adjoint commutativity

Abstract

In the conventional quantum mechanics of conserved systems, Hamiltonian is assumed to be a Hermitian operator. However, when it comes to quantum systems in presence of dissipation and/or noise, including open quantum optical systems, the strict hermiticity requirement is nor longer necessary. In fact, it can be substantially relaxed: the non-Hermitian part of a Hamiltonian is allowed, in order to account for effects of dissipative environment, whereas its Hermitian part would be describing subsystem’s energy. Within the framework of the standard approach to dissipative phenomena based on a master equation for the reduced density operator, we propose a replacement of the hermiticity condition by a more general condition of commutativity between Hermitian and anti-Hermitian parts of a Hamiltonian. As an example, we consider a dissipative two-mode quantum system coupled to a single-mode electromagnetic wave, where we demonstrate that the adjoint-commutativity condition does simplify the parametric space of the model.