The damped harmonic oscillator is used to represent the damping processes in nature. Therefore it is necessary to find the Hamiltonian for the damped oscillator. The Hamiltonian is developed for the harmonic oscillator with frictional force proportional to velocity. The solution of the Schr\"odinger equation gives nonstationary states. The quantum friction coefficient is derived to be zero for massless particles. It is thought that velocity-dependent forces exist near the nucleus and therefore, the scattering amplitude for the deep inelastic process is derived.
Considering the Lagrangian proposed by Havas, that describes the classical damped motion of a particle, new momentum and position are defined in order to write a Hamiltonian that is subsequently quantized and expressed in terms of non-Hermitian operators. Using the c-number formalism proposed by Lax and Yuen, we associate to the quantum Liouville equation a Fokker–Planck one in terms of c-numbers. From the properties of this equation we obtain the mean values of the position, momentum, and energy of a brownian particle and we also verify the uncertainty principle. We observe that when the system is considered under the Markov hypothesis, the stochastic force is intimately related to the uncertainty principle and to the zero point energy.
Building upon the work of Hu, Paz, and Zhang [1,2] on open quantum systems we consider the quantum Brownian motion (QBM) model with one oscillator (position variable
x) as the system, {\it nonlinearly} coupled to an environment of
N harmonic oscillators (with mass
mn, natural frequency
ωn, position
qn and momentum
pn variables) in the form
∑n(vn1(x)qnk+vn2(x)pnl) where
k,l are integers (the present work only considers the
k=l=2 cases). The vertex functions $v_{n1}, v_{n2} $ are of the form
vn1=λCn1f(x),vn2(x)=−λCn2mn−2ωn−2f(x) where
Cn1,2 are the coupling constants with the
nth oscillator,
f(x) is any arbitrary function of
x, and
λ is a dimensionless constant. Employing the closed-time-path formalism the influence action
SIF is calculated using a perturbative expansion in
λ. It is possible to identify the terms in
SIF quadratic or higher in
Δ(s)≡f(x+(s))−f(x−(s)) to constitute the noise kernel, while terms linear in
Δ to that of the dissipation kernel. The non-Gaussian noise kernel gives rise to non-zero three-point correlation function of the corresponding stochastic force. The pathway presented here should be useful for the exploration of \textit{non-Gaussian properties of systems nonlinearly coupled with their environments}; examples in early universe cosmology and in quantum optomechanics (QOM) are mentioned. A modified fluctuation-dissipation relation (FDR) is also established, which ensures the consistency of the model and the accuracy of results even at higher perturbative orders. Another result of significance is the derivation of a nonlinear Langevin equation which is expected to be useful for many open quantum system applications.
A quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a two-level system provides a tractable model of many physical systems from atoms in an optical cavity, to superconducting qubits coupled to an oscillator, to quantum dots in a photonic crystal. When the system experiences damping, the problem becomes considerably more complicated. We demonstrate how to gain insight by drawing analogies to classical damping. Specifically, we show how a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled to a damped two-level system can display two types of frictional behavior, corresponding to classical motion in a fluid and motion on a rough surface. We further show that this system can be tuned continuously between these two regimes.
The quantum theory of a damped harmonic oscillator is developed by considering an exactly solvable model, previously discussed by Unruh and Zurek [Phys. Rev. D 40, 1071 (1989)]. A one-dimensional harmonic oscillator is coupled to a scalar field. The field is assumed to be initially in thermal equilibrium. The Heisenberg equations of motion are solved without approximation, and the first and second moments, 〈q(t)〉, 〈p(t)〉, 〈
q2(t)〉, 〈
p2(t)〉, and 〈q(t)p(t)+p(t)q(t)〉 of the coordinate and momentum of the oscillator are calculated. The high-temperature, zero-temperature, free-particle, and weak-damping limits are discussed. A Wigner function of Gaussian form is constructed. The density-matrix equation derived by Louisell $[---Quantum Statistical Properties of Radiation (Wiley, New York, 1973)] is examined and shown to have a solution in agreement with our weak-damping limit.