Transient Dynamics of a Driven Quantum Bistable System

We study the transient dynamics and the asymptotic behaviour of a multilevel system in the strong dissipation regime. The system is modeled as a periodically driven quantum particle in an asymmetric double well potential, interacting with the bosonic heat bath of the Caldeira-Leggett model. The analytical approach used is non-perturbative in the particle-bath coupling and is based on a space-discretized path integral expression for the particle’s reduced density matrix. By a suitable approximationon the Feynman-Vernon influence functional a Markov-approximated master equation is obtained for the populations in the Discrete Variable Representation (DVR).