Resolving Discrepancy between Liouvillian Gap and Relaxation Time in Boundary-Dissipated Quantum Many-Body Systems

Abstract: The gap of the Liouvillian spectrum gives the asymptotic decay rate of a quantum dissipative system, and therefore its inverse has been identified as the slowest relaxation time. In contrary to this common belief, we show that the relaxation time due to diffusive transports in a boundary dissipated many-body quantum system is determined not by the gap or low-lying eigenvalues of the Liouvillian but by superexponentially large expansion coefficients for Liouvillian eigenvectors with non-small eigenvalues at an initial state. This finding resolves an apparent discrepancy reported in the literature between the inverse of the Liouvillian gap and the relaxation time in dissipative many-body quantum systems.