The Master equation in Lindblad form (aka the Lindblad equation) is the most general possible evolution of an open quantum system that is Markovian and time-homogeneous. Markovian means that the way in which the density matrix evolves is determined completely by the current density matrix. This is the assumption that there are no memory effects, i.e. that the environment does not store information about earlier state of the system that can influence the system in the future.Here’s an example of a memory effect: An atom immersed in an electromagnetic field can be in one of two states, excited or ground. If it is in an excited state then, during a time interval, it has a certain probability of decaying to the ground state by emitting a photon. If it is in the ground state then it also has a chance of becoming excited by the ambient field. The situation where the atom is in a space of essentially infinite size would be Markovian, because the emitted photon (which embodies a record of the atom’s previous state of excitement) would travel away from the atom never to interact with it again. It might still become excited because of the ambient field, but its chance of doing so isn’t influenced by its previous state. But if the atom is in a container with reflecting walls, then the photon might be reflected back towards the atom, changing the probability that it becomes excited during a later period.a Time-homogeneous just means that the rule for stochastically evolving the system from one time to the next is the same for all times.
Given an arbitrary orthonormal basis 
of the space of operators on the 
-dimensional Hilbert space of the system (according to the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product ![\langle A,B \rangle = \mathrm{Tr}[A^\dagger B]](https://blog.jessriedel.com/wp-content/ql-cache/quicklatex.com-636644f705dd45f439ca67ec5480de8e_l3.svg "Rendered by QuickLaTeX.com")
), the Lindblad equation takes the following form:
(1) ![\begin{align*} \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t} \rho=- i[H,\rho]+\sum_{n,m = 1}^{N^2-1} h_{n,m}\left(L_n\rho L_m^\dagger-\frac{1}{2}\left(\rho L_m^\dagger L_n + L_m^\dagger L_n\rho\right)\right) , \end{align*}](https://blog.jessriedel.com/wp-content/ql-cache/quicklatex.com-6cb3261efe2af8d657e029e0cd14ea17_l3.svg "Rendered by QuickLaTeX.com")
with 
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