Entanglement Relativity in the Foundations of The Open Quantum Systems Theory

TL;DR

This paper explores how entanglement relativity affects the foundational understanding of open quantum systems, highlighting difficulties in deriving master equations for different system partitions and questioning existing methods like Nakajima-Zwanzig.

Contribution

It identifies fundamental challenges in applying traditional derivation techniques to alternative partitions of quantum systems due to entanglement relativity.

Findings

Standard projection methods face difficulties with alternative partitions.

Entanglement relativity complicates the derivation of master equations.

The paper discusses prospects for a consistent foundational framework.

Abstract

Realistic many-particle systems dynamically exchange particles with their environments. In classical physics, small variations in the number of constituent particles are commonly considered practically irrelevant. However, in the quantum mechanical context, such and similar structural variations are generically taxed due to the so-called Entanglement Relativity. In this paper we point out difficulties in deriving master equation for a subsystem of an alternative partition of the closed quantum system. We find that the Nakajima-Zwanzig projection method cannot be straightforwardly used to solve the problem. The emerging tasks and prospects for the consistent foundations are examined.