Symmetrized Liouvillian Gap in Markovian Open Quantum Systems

Markovian open quantum systems display complicated relaxation dynamics. The spectral gap of the Liouvillian characterizes the asymptotic decay rate toward the steady state, but it does not necessarily give a correct estimate of the relaxation time because the crossover time to the asymptotic regime may be too long. We here give a rigorous upper bound on the transient decay of autocorrelation functions in the steady state by introducing the symmetrized Liouvillian gap. The standard Liouvillian gap and the symmetrized one are identical in an equilibrium situation but differ from each other in the absence of the detailed balance condition. It is numerically shown that the symmetrized Liouvillian gap always gives a correct upper bound on the decay of the autocorrelation function, but the standard Liouvillian gap does not.