Spectral and ergodic properties of completely positive maps and decoherence

Abstract

In an attempt to propose more general conditions for decoherence to occur, we study spectral and ergodic properties of unital, completely positive maps on not necessarily unital C *algebras, with a particular focus on gapped maps for which the transient portion of the arising dynamical system can be separated from the persistent one. After some general results, we first devote our attention to the abelian case by investigating the unital * -endomorphisms of, in general non-unital, C * -algebras, and their spectral structure. The finite dimensional case is also investigated in detail, and examples are provided of unital completely positive maps for which the persistent part of the associated dynamical system is equipped with the new product making it a C * -algebra, and the map under consideration restricts to a unital * -automorphism for this new C * -structure, thus generating a conservative dynamics on that persistent part.