An introduction to operational quantum dynamics

Understand

In the summer of 2016, physicists gathered in Torun, Poland for the 48th annual Symposium on Mathematical Physics.

• This Symposium was special; it celebrated the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad master equation, which is widely used in quantum physics and quantum chemistry.
• This article forms part of a Special Volume of the journal Open Systems & Information Dynamics arising from that conference; and it aims to celebrate a related discovery -- also by Sudarshan -- that of Quantum Maps (which had their 55th anniversary in the same year).
• Nowadays, much like the master equation, quantum maps are ubiquitous in physics and chemistry.