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arXiv:0708.0882 · Physica A Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

Quantum Brownian motion of a macroscopic object in a general environment

Chung-Hsien Chou, B. L. Hu, Ting Yu

Published Oct 2, 2007• 25 citations
arXivHTMLPDF
DOI
10.1016/j.physa.2007.09.025

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For the purpose of understanding the quantum behavior such as quantum decoherence, fluctuations, dissipation, entanglement and teleportation of a mesoscopic or macroscopic object interacting with a general environment, we derive here a set of exact master equations for the reduced density matrix of N interacting harmonic oscillators in a heat bath with arbitrary spectral density and temperature. For the case N = 2, we also give an influence functional treatment of this model and provide explicit expressions for the evolution operator of the reduced density matrix which are useful for the study of decoherence and disentanglement issues. We show a simple application of this master equation by examining the decoherence and disentanglement of two harmonic oscillators due to their interaction with a common environment under Markovian approximation. Two classes of problems of interest to us which these equations can be usefully applied to are that of the quantum dynamics of nanoelectromechanical oscillators and the entanglement evolution of multi-partite macroscopic states such as quantum superposition of mirrors in a high Q cavity. To address a key conceptual issue for macroscopic quantum phenomena we examine the conditions for an assumption often implicitly made in these studies to be valid, namely, that the quantum behavior of a macroscopic object in an environment can be accurately represented by only treating the dynamics of its center-of-mass variable. We also mention how these results can be used to calculate the uncertainty principle governing a macroscopic object at finite temperature.
Classical objectivity as a property of quantum states —a view proposed to explain the observer-independent character of our world from quantum theory, is an important step in bridging the quantum-classical gap. It was recently derived in terms of spectrum broadcast structures for small objects embedded in noisy photon-like environments. However, two fundamental problems have arisen: a description of objective motion and applicability to other types of environments. Here we derive an example of objective states of motion in quantum mechanics by showing the formation of dynamical spectrum broadcast structures in the celebrated, realistic model of decoherence —Quantum Brownian Motion. We do it for realistic, thermal environments and show their noise-robustness. This opens a potentially new method of studying the quantum-to-classical transition.
We explore some aspects of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics of classical and quantum systems. Two chapters are devoted to fluctuation theorems which were originally derived for classical systems. The main challenge in formulating them in quantum mechanics is the fact that fundamental quantities of interest, like work, are defined via the classical concept of a phase space trajectory. We utilize the decoherent histories conceptual framework, in which classical trajectories emerge in quantum mechanics as a result of coarse graining, and provide a first-principles analysis of the nonequilibrium work relation of Jarzynski and Crooks's fluctuation theorem for a quantum system interacting with a general environment based on the quantum Brownian motion (QBM) model. We indicate a parameter range at low temperatures where the theorems might fail in their original form. Fluctuation theorems of Jarzynski and Crooks for systems obeying classical Hamiltonian dynamics are derived under the assumption that the initial conditions are sampled from a canonical ensemble, even though the equilibrium state of an isolated system is typically associated with the microcanonical ensemble. We address this issue through an exact analysis of the classical Brownian motion model. We argue that a stronger form of ensemble equivalence than usually discussed in equilibrium statistical mechanics is required for these theorems to hold in the infinite environment limit irrespective of the ensemble used, and proceed to prove it for this model. An exact expression for the probability distribution of work is obtained for finite environments. Intuitively one expects a system to relax to an equilibrium state when brought into contact with a thermal environment. Yet it is important to have rigorous results that provide conditions for equilibration and characterize the equilibrium state. We consider the dynamics of open quantum systems using the Langevin and master equations and rigorously show that under fairly general conditions quantum systems interacting with a heat bath relax to the equilibrium state defined as the reduced thermal state of the system plus environment, even in the strong coupling regime. Our proof is valid to second-order in interaction strength for general systems and exact for the linear QBM model, for which we also show the equivalence of multi-time correlations. In the final chapter we give a sampling of our investigations into macroscopic quantum phenomena. We work out in detail a specific example of how and under what conditions the center of mass (CoM) coordinate of a macroscopic object emerges as the relevant degree of freedom. Interaction patterns are studied in terms of the couplings they induce between the CoM and relative coordinates of two macroscopic objects. We discuss the implications of these interaction patterns on macroscopic entanglement.