We investigate the use of accurate path integral methods, namely the quasi-adiabatic propagator path integral (QuAPI) and the quantum-classical path integral (QCPI), for generating the memory kernel entering generalized quantum master equations (GQME). Our calculations indicate that the length of the memory kernel in system-bath models is equal to the full length of time nonlocality encoded in the Feynman–Vernon influence functional and that the solution of the GQME with a QuAPI kernel is identical to that obtained through an iterative QuAPI calculation with the same memory length. Further, we show that the memory length in iterative QCPI calculations is always shorter than the GQME kernel memory length. This stems from the ability of the QCPI methodology to pretreat all memory effects of a classical nature (i.e., those associated with phonon absorption and stimulated emission), as well as some of the quantum memory contributions (arising from spontaneous phonon emission). Furthermore, trajectory-based iterative QCPI simulations can fully account for important structural/conformational changes that may occur on very long time scales and that cannot be captured via master equation treatments.

Dynamic cooperativity in monomeric enzymes is characterized in terms of a non-Michaelis-Menten kinetic behaviour. The latter is believed to be associated with mechanisms that include multiple reaction pathways due to enzymatic conformational fluctuations. Recent advances in single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy have provided new fundamental insights on the possible mechanisms underlying reactions catalyzed by fluctuating enzymes. Here, we present a bottom-up approach to understand enzyme turnover kinetics at physiologically relevant mesoscopic concentrations informed by mechanisms extracted from single-molecule stochastic trajectories. The stochastic approach, presented here, shows the emergence of dynamic cooperativity in terms of a slowing down of the Michaelis-Menten (MM) kinetics resulting in negative cooperativity. For fewer enzymes, dynamic cooperativity emerges due to the combined effects of enzymatic conformational fluctuations and molecular discreteness. The increase in the number of enzymes, however, suppresses the effect of enzymatic conformational fluctuations such that dynamic cooperativity emerges solely due to the discrete changes in the number of reacting species. These results confirm that the turnover kinetics of fluctuating enzyme based on the parallel-pathway MM mechanism switches over to the singlepathway MM mechanism with the increase in the number of enzymes. For large enzyme numbers, convergence to the exact MM equation occurs in the limit of very high substrate concentration as the stochastic kinetics approaches the deterministic behaviour.

The time evolution of purity for an initially localized state of a symmetric two-level system coupled to a dissipative bath is investigated using numerically exact real-time path integral methods. With strong system-bath coupling and high temperature, the purity decays monotonically to its fully mixed value, with a short-time Gaussian behavior, which is subsequently followed by exponential evolution. However, under low-temperature and weak coupling conditions, a substantial recovery of purity is observed. A simple theoretical analysis reveals three contributions that correspond to a completely incoherent, eigenstate population difference and rate terms. The last two of these terms can counter the early drop of purity and are responsible for its rebound. These findings caution against using purity as a measure of decoherence in the dynamics of quantum dissipative systems.

We investigate the time evolution of the reduced density matrix (RDM) and its purity in the dynamics of a two-level system coupled to a dissipative harmonic bath, when the system is initially placed in one of its eigenstates.