Uncertainty, entropy and decoherence of the damped harmonic oscillator in the Lindblad theory of open quantum systems

In the framework of the Lindblad theory for open quantum systems, expressions for the density operator, von Neumann entropy and effective temperature of the damped harmonic oscillator are obtained. The entropy for a state characterized by a Wigner distribution function which is Gaussian in form is found to depend only on the variance of the distribution function. We give a series of inequalities, relating uncertainty to von Neumann entropy and linear entropy. We analyze the conditions for purity of states and show that for a special choice of the diffusion coefficients, the correlated coherent states (squeezed coherent states) are the only states which remain pure all the time during the evolution of the considered system. These states are also the most stable under evolution in the presence of the environment and play an important role in the description of environment induced decoherence. PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz, 05.30.-d, 05.40.+j † e-mail address: [email protected]