A NONLINEAR QUANTUM TRANSPORT-THEORY

A nonlinear quantum transport theory for many-body systems arbitrarily far away from equilibrium, based on the nonequilibrium statistical operator method, is discussed. An iterative process is described that allows for the calculation of the collision operator in a series of instantaneous in time partial contributions of ever increasing power in the interaction strengths. These partial collision operators are shown to be composed of three contributions to the dissipative processes: one is a direct result of the collisions, another is accounted for in the internal state variables, and the third arises from memory effects. In the lowest order, the so-called linear theory of relaxation, the equations become Markovian. © 1990.