Using Phase Space helps to understand better how Quantum Systems couple to the Environment

What is it about?

Quantum systems are typically described by complex wave functions but when switching to Wigner's phase space description, these functions are real valued and in some case have simple form. Also, the evolution in time can be described fairly simply. We found that even the coupling of a quantum system to the environment, or the pollution by the environment can be described more simply than standard methods allow.

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Why is it important?

Quantum systems' behaviour can be hard to understand, here we show that using a representation in phase space teaches us new aspects. The unavoidable coupling of a quantum system to the environment surrounding it used to be a hard problem and it took decades to work out what the general rules are. Here we show that the phase space perspective is very transparent for understanding how such couplings have to be described mathematically.

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