The recently developed formalism of Markovian master equations for quantum open systems with external periodic driving is applied to the theory of dynamical decoupling by periodic control. This new approach provides a more detailed quantitative picture of this phenomenon applicable both to traditional NMR spectroscopy and to recent attempts of decoherence reduction in quantum devices. For popular choices of bath spectral densities and a two-level system, exact formulas for the relaxation rates are available. In the context of NMR imaging, the obtained formulas allow the extraction of a new parameter describing bath relaxation time from the experimental data.

• Received 25 May 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.022349