arXiv:1904.07555 · Physical Review A
Quantum partition of energy for a free Brownian particle: Impact of dissipation
Jakub Spiechowicz, P. Bialas, J. Łuczka
Abstract
We study the quantum counterpart of the theorem on energy equipartition for classical systems. We consider a free quantum Brownian particle modeled in terms of the Caldeira-Leggett framework: a system plus thermostat consisting of an infinite number of harmonic oscillators. By virtue of the theorem on the averaged kinetic energy ${E}_{k}$ of the quantum particle, it is expressed as ${E}_{k}=\ensuremath{\langle}{\mathcal{E}}_{k}\ensuremath{\rangle}$, where ${\mathcal{E}}_{k}$ is the thermal kinetic energy of the thermostat per 1 degree of freedom and $\ensuremath{\langle}\ensuremath{\cdots}\ensuremath{\rangle}$ denotes averaging over the frequencies $\ensuremath{\omega}$ of thermostat oscillators which contribute to ${E}_{k}$ according to the probability distribution $\mathbb{P}(\ensuremath{\omega})$. We explore the impact of various dissipation mechanisms, via the Drude, Gaussian, algebraic, and Debye spectral density functions, on the characteristic features of $\mathbb{P}(\ensuremath{\omega})$. The role of the system-thermostat coupling strength and the memory time on the most probable thermostat oscillator frequency as well as the kinetic energy ${E}_{k}$ of the Brownian particle is analyzed.