Microscopic analysis of the microscopic reversibility in quantum systems

TL;DR

This paper examines the conditions under which microscopic reversibility holds in open quantum systems, deriving an exact relation between forward and reversed transition probabilities and analyzing correction terms.

Contribution

It provides a new exact relation for transition probabilities in quantum systems and discusses when microscopic reversibility is approximately valid.

Findings

Correction terms can be negligible under certain processes

Microscopic reversibility nearly holds even in small local systems

Derived an exact relation between forward and reversed transition probabilities

Abstract

We investigate the robustness of the microscopic reversibility in open quantum systems which is discussed by Monnai [arXiv:1106.1982 (2011)]. We derive an exact relation between the forward transition probability and the reversed transition probability in the case of a general measurement basis. We show that the microscopic reversibility acquires some corrections in general and discuss the physical meaning of the corrections. Under certain processes, some of the correction terms vanish and we numerically confirmed that the remaining correction term becomes negligible; the microscopic reversibility almost holds even when the local system cannot be regarded as macroscopic.