arXiv:1904.07560 · Scientific Reports
Partition of energy for a dissipative quantum oscillator
P. Bialas, Jakub Spiechowicz, J. Łuczka
Abstract
Abstract We reveal a new face of the old clichéd system: a dissipative quantum harmonic oscillator. We formulate and study a quantum counterpart of the energy equipartition theorem satisfied for classical systems. Both mean kinetic energy Ek and mean potential energy Ep of the oscillator are expressed as Ek = 〈εk〉 and Ep = 〈εp〉, where 〈εk〉 and 〈εp〉 are mean kinetic and potential energies per one degree of freedom of the thermostat which consists of harmonic oscillators too. The symbol 〈...〉 denotes two-fold averaging: (i) over the Gibbs canonical state for the thermostat and (ii) over thermostat oscillators frequencies ω which contribute to Ek and Ep according to the probability distribution $${{\mathbb{P}}}_{k}(\omega )$$ ℙ k ( ω ) and $${{\mathbb{P}}}_{p}(\omega )$$ ℙ p ( ω ) , respectively. The role of the system-thermostat coupling strength and the memory time is analysed for the exponentially decaying memory function (Drude dissipation mechanism) and the algebraically decaying damping kernel.