Generalized Kraus operators and generators of quantum dynamical semigroups

Quantum dynamical semigroups play an important role in the description of physical processes such as diffusion, radiative decay or other non-equilibrium events. Taking strongly continuous and trace preserving semigroups into consideration, we show that, under a special criterion, the generator of such a group admits a certain generalized standard form, thereby shedding new light on known approaches in this direction. Furthermore, we illustrate our analysis in concrete examples.