Diagrammatic representation and nonperturbative approximations of the exact time-convolutionless master equation

Abstract

The time-convolutionless master equation provides a general framework to model the non-Markovian dynamics of an open quantum system with a time-local generator. A diagrammatic representation is developed and proven for the perturbative expansion of the exact time-local generator for an open quantum system interacting with arbitrary environments. A truncation of the perturbation expansion leads to perturbative time-convolutionless quantum master equations. We further introduce a general iterative approach to construct nonperturbative approximations for the time-local generator as nested time-ordered exponential operators.