| In quantum mechanics, there is a set of problems where the system of interest interacts with another system, usually called “environment”. This interaction leads to the exchange of energy and information and makes the dynamics of the system of interest essentially non-unitary. Such problems often appeared in condensed matter physics and attracted much attention after recent advances in nanotechnology. As broadly posed as they are, these problems require a variety of different approaches. This thesis is an attempt to examine several of these approaches in applications to different condensed matter problems. The first problem concerns the so-called “Master equation” approach which is very popular in quantum optics. I show that analytic properties of environmental correlators lead to strong restrictions on the applicability of the approach to the strong-coupling regime of interest in condensed matter physics. In the second problem, I use path integrals to treat the localization of particles on attractive short-range potentials when the environment produces an effective viscous friction force. I find that friction changes drastically the localization properties and leads to much stronger localization in comparison to the non-dissipative case. This has implications for the motion of heavy particles in fermionic liquids and, as will be argued below, is also relevant to the problem of high-temperature superconductivity. Finally, the third problem deals with the interplay of geometric phases and energy dissipation which occurs in the motion of vortices in superconductors. It is shown that this interplay leads to interesting predictions for vortex tunneling in high-temperature superconductors which have been partially confirmed by experiments. |
