NON-MARKOVIAN THEORY OF MOLECULAR RELAXATION .1. VIBRATIONAL-RELAXATION AND DEPHASING IN CONDENSED PHASES

The cumulant expansion is used to derive two formally different master equations for a two-level molecular system interacting with a bath, starting wit The two master equations reduce to the same form in the markovian limit for the bath (where its correlation time is much shorter than the relaxation pr A detailed comparison is made between the predictions of the two approaches which enables us to understand their range of validity and limitations. We apply the formalism to the vibrational relaxation and dephasing of a molecular impurity in a solid matrix and obtain a closed expression for the vib In contrast to the simple stochastic approaches we predict that the line shape in the non-markovian limit contains information regarding the interactio However, the fluctuations in the mean interaction energy of the two-level system with the bath, if correlated with the frequency modulation, result in. © 1979.