Finite representations of continuum environments

Understanding dissipative and decohering processes is fundamental to the study of quantum systems. An accurate and generic method for investigating these processes is to simulate both the system and environment, which, however, is computationally very demanding. We develop a novel approach to constructing finite representations of the environment based on the influence of different frequency scales on the system's dynamics. As an illustration, we analyze a solvable model of an optical mode decaying into a reservoir. The influence of the environment modes is constant for small frequencies, but drops off rapidly for large frequencies, allowing for a very sparse representation at high frequencies that gives a significant computational speedup in simulating the environment. This approach provides a general framework for simulating open quantum systems. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.