Third quantization of open quantum systems: new dissipative symmetries and connections to phase-space and Keldysh field theory formulations

The connections between standard theoretical tools used to study open quantum systems can sometimes seem opaque. Whether it is a Lindblad master equation, the equation of motion for the Wigner function or a dissipative Keldysh action, features evident in one formalism are often masked in another. Here, we reformulate the technique of third quantization in a way that explicitly connects all three methods. We first show that our formulation reveals a fundamental dissipative symmetry present in all quadratic bosonic or fermionic Lindbladians. This symmetry can then be used to easily diagonalize these models, and provides a intuitive way to demonstrate the separation of dissipation and fluctations in linear systems. For bosons, we then show that the Wigner function and the characteristic function can be thought of as ''wavefunctions'' of the density matrix in the eigenbasis of the third-quantized superoperators we introduce. The field-theory representation of the time-evolution operator in this basis is then the Keldysh path integral. To highlight the utility of our approach, we apply our version of third quantization to a dissipative non-linear oscillator, and use it to obtain new exact results.