Quantum Angular Momentum Diffusion of Rigid Bodies

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum mechanical framework to describe how the angular momentum of arbitrarily shaped rigid bodies diffuses due to environmental interactions, with applications to nanoparticles and dielectric particles.

Contribution

It introduces a general Lindblad master equation for quantum angular momentum diffusion and derives specific diffusion coefficients for gas and photon scattering scenarios.

Findings

Derived diffusion coefficients for gas-particle scattering

Linked angular momentum diffusion to orientational decoherence

Presented a general Lindblad master equation for the process

Abstract

We show how to describe the diffusion of the quantized angular momentum vector of an arbitrarily shaped rigid rotor as induced by its collisional interaction with an environment. We present the general form of the Lindblad-type master equation and relate it to the orientational decoherence of an asymmetric nanoparticle in the limit of small anisotropies. The corresponding diffusion coefficients are derived for gas particles scattering off large molecules and for ambient photons scattering off dielectric particles, using the elastic scattering amplitudes.