On the decay law for unstable open systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the decay law of quantum unstable systems coupled with environments, finding that deviations from exponential decay are minimal and negligible in practical experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamical semigroup approach to analyze decay laws, demonstrating that quantum deviations from exponential decay are insignificant in real-world scenarios.

Findings

Deviations from exponential decay are small.

Quantum decay closely follows classical exponential law.

Results are applicable to practical experimental conditions.

Abstract

We use (nonconservative) dynamical semigroups to investigate the decay law of a quantum unstable system weakly coupled with a large environment. We find that the deviations from the classical exponential law are small and can be safely ignored in any actual experiment.