Quantum decoherence and the Glauber dynamics from the Stochastic limit

The effects of decoherence for quantum system coupled with a bosonic field are investigated. An application of the stochastic golden rule shows that in the stochastic limit the dynamics of such a system is described by a quantum stochastic differential equation. The corresponding master equation describes convergence of a system to equilibrium. In particular it predicts exponential damping for off–diagonal matrix elements of the system density matrix, moreover these elements for a generic system will decay at least as exp(−tN kT ¯ ), where N is a number of particles in the system. As an application of the described technique a derivation from first principles (i.e. starting from a Hamiltonian description) of a quantum extension of the Glauber dynamics for systems of spins is given.