Quantum entropy of systems coupled to sinks or sources

Alessandro Sergi, Konstantin G. Zloshchastiev

Published 2015-02-25Version 1

We have studied the quantum entropy for systems which are coupled to sinks or sources. We generalize the von Neumann entropy to this case and prove that its production is in general different from zero. Such a generalization captures the expected behavior of the entropy as a measure of disorder in quantum dissipative systems. We illustrate the theory by explicitly studying a tunneling model with two energy levels and detuning.