Perturbative approach to Markovian open quantum systems

The exact treatment of Markovian open quantum systems, when based on numerical diagonalization of the Liouville super-operator or averaging over quantum trajectories, is severely limited by Hilbert space size. Perturbation theory, standard in the investigation of closed quantum systems, has remained much less developed for open quantum systems where a direct application to the Lindblad master equation is desirable. We present such a perturbative treatment which will be useful for an analytical understanding of open quantum systems and for numerical calculation of system observables which would otherwise be impractical.