On the Nature of Fermi Golden Rule for Open Quantum Systems

We consider a general class of models consisting of a small quantum system $S$ interacting with a reservoir $R$ . We compare three applications of 2nd order perturbation theory (the Fermi Golden Rule) to the study of such models: (1) the van Hove (weak coupling) limit for the dynamics reduced to $S$ ; (2) the Fermi Golden Rule applied to the Liouvillean—an argument that was used in recent papers on the return to equilibrium; (3) the Fermi Golden Rule applied to the so-called C-Liouvillean. These three applications lead to three Level Shift Operators. As our main result, we prove that if the reservoir $R$ is thermal (if it satisfies the KMS condition), then the Level Shift Operator obtained in (1) (often called the Davies generator) and the Level Shift Operator constructed in (2) are connected by a similarity transformation. We also show that the Davies generator coincides with the Level Shift Operator obtained in (3) for a general $R$ .