An open quantum systems is a quantum system interacting with its surroundings. They are frequently encountered since no quantum system can be consider completely isolated from it's environment. Typically the coupling of the
open system to it's external environment leads to decoherence and dissipation which is detrimental to quantum
properties such as entanglement. During the last few decades incredible technological advances have made it possible to even experimentally study open quantum system dynamics.
In this course we give an introduction to the theory of open quantum systems focusing on stochastic descriptions of the dynamics. These, so called quantum trajectory unravelings of the dynamical map describing the open system dynamics provide additional physical insight to decoherence, continuous quantum measurements etc.
We start by first reviewing the basics of Hilbert space quantum mechanics, quantum measurements and stochastic processes. Then we discuss Markovian and non-Markovian open quantum system dynamics and their stochastic descriptions.
Throughout the course we will highlight the concepts with
relevant physical examples.