Abstract
The requirement is often made in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that a transport equation should be derived as that which governs the subdynamics relative to a (small) part of a (large) conservative dynamical system close to equilibrium. We show that such a requirement on the Markovian relaxation of a 1/2-spin imposes that this process be described by a Bloch equation of a very specific form, which we call standard. We show that this reduced dynamics is quasi-free if, and only if, the relaxation time is maximally anisotropic.
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Research supported in part by NSF grant MCS 76-07286
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Emch, G.G., Varilly, J.C. On the standard form of the Bloch equation. Lett Math Phys 3, 113–116 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00400065
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00400065