I have blogged before about the conceptual importance of ideal, symplectic covariant quantum Brownian motion (QBM). In short: QBM is to open quantum systems as the harmonic oscillator is to closed quantum systems. Like the harmonic oscillator, (a) QBM is universal because it’s the leading-order behavior of a taylor series expansion; (b) QBM evolution has a very intuitive interpretation in terms of wavepackets evolving under classical flow; and (c) QBM is exactly solvable.
If that sounds like a diatribe up your alley, then you are in luck. I recently ranted about it here at PI. It’s just a summary of the literature; there are no new results. As always, I recommend downloading the raw video file so you can run it at arbitrary speed.
If you want more reading, see the blog post linked above and the citations in the introduction of my related PRA.
The fact that this isn’t taught in every graduate quantum mechanics class is more evidence that graduate education is awful and stagnant. Professors choose topics based on historical accident and inertia rather than trying to give their students a thorough, deep, and clarifying understanding of quantum mechanics.
I am following. how do i download the video?
Looks like the link “Download mp4 file” was broken, but I think I’ve fixed it. If that doesn’t work, try here: http://streamer2.perimeterinstitute.ca/mp4-med/16050029.mp4