Experimentalists have come to temperatures very close to absolute zero at which physics that was once ordinary becomes extraordinary. In such a regime quantum effects and fluctuations start to play a dominant role. In this context we study the simplest open quantum system, namely, a free quantum Brownian particle coupled to thermal vacuum, i.e. thermostat in the limiting case of absolute zero temperature. We analyze the average energy [Formula: see text] of the particle from a weak to strong interaction strength c between the particle and thermal vacuum. The impact of various dissipation mechanisms is considered. In the weak coupling regime the energy tends to zero as [Formula: see text] while in the strong coupling regime it diverges to infinity as [Formula: see text]. We demonstrate it for selected examples of the dissipation mechanisms defined by the memory kernel [Formula: see text] of the Generalized Langevin Equation. We reveal how at a fixed value of c the energy E(c) depends on the dissipation model: one has to compare values of the derivative [Formula: see text] of the dissipation function [Formula: see text] at time [Formula: see text] or at the memory time [Formula: see text] which characterizes the degree of non-Markovianity of the Brownian particle dynamics. The impact of low temperature is also presented.
Experimentalists have come to temperatures very close to absolute zero at which physics that was once ordinary becomes extraordinary. In such a regime quantum effects and fluctuations start to play a dominant role. In this context we study the simplest open quantum system, namely, a free quantum Brownian particle coupled to thermal vacuum, i.e. thermostat in the limiting case of absolute zero temperature. We analyze the average energy [Formula: see text] of the particle from a weak to strong interaction strength c between the particle and thermal vacuum. The impact of various dissipation mechanisms is considered. In the weak coupling regime the energy tends to zero as [Formula: see text] while in the strong coupling regime it diverges to infinity as [Formula: see text]. We demonstrate it for selected examples of the dissipation mechanisms defined by the memory kernel [Formula: see text] of the Generalized Langevin Equation. We reveal how at a fixed value of c the energy E(c) depends on the dissipation model: one has to compare values of the derivative [Formula: see text] of the dissipation function [Formula: see text] at time [Formula: see text] or at the memory time [Formula: see text] which characterizes the degree of non-Markovianity of the Brownian particle dynamics. The impact of low temperature is also presented.
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 Ek of the quantum particle, it is expressed as ${E}_{k}=\ensuremath{\langle}{\mathcal{E}}_{k}\ensuremath{\rangle}$, where Ek 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 Ek 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 Ek of the Brownian particle is analyzed.
We consider a paradigmatic model of a quantum Brownian particle coupled to a thermostat consisting of harmonic oscillators. In the framework of a generalized Langevin equation, the memory (damping) kernel is assumed to be in the form of exponentially-decaying oscillations. We discuss a quantum counterpart of the equipartition energy theorem for a free Brownian particle in a thermal equilibrium state. We conclude that the average kinetic energy of the Brownian particle is equal to thermally-averaged kinetic energy per one degree of freedom of oscillators of the environment, additionally averaged over all possible oscillators' frequencies distributed according to some probability density in which details of the particle-environment interaction are present via the parameters of the damping kernel.
Abstract We consider energetics of a free quantum Brownian particle coupled to thermostat of temperature T and study this problem in terms of the lately formulated quantum analogue of the energy equipartition theorem. We show how this quantum counterpart can be derived from the Callen–Welton fluctuation-dissipation relation and rephrased in terms of superstatistics. We analyse the influence of the system-thermostat coupling strength and the memory time of the dissipation kernel on statistical characteristics of the particle energy and its specific heat.
The Brownian motion of a quantum particle in a harmonic confining potential and coupled to harmonic quantum thermal bath is exactly solvable. Though this system presents at high temperatures a pedagogic example to explain the laws of thermodynamics, it is shown that at low enough temperatures the stationary state is non-Gibbsian due to an entanglement with the bath. In physical terms, this happens when the cloud of bath modes around the particle starts to play a nontrivial role, namely, when the bath temperature T is smaller than the coupling energy. Indeed, equilibrium thermodynamics of the total system, particle plus bath, does not imply standard equilibrium thermodynamics for the particle itself at low T. Various formulations of the second law are found to be invalid at low T. First, the Clausius inequality can be violated, because heat can be extracted from the zero point energy of the cloud of bath modes. Second, when the width of the confining potential is suddenly changed, there occurs a relaxation to equilibrium during which the entropy production is partly negative. In this process the energy put on the particle does not relax monotonically, but oscillates between particle and bath, even in the limit of strong damping. Third, for nonadiabatic changes of system parameters the rate of energy dissipation can be negative, and, out of equilibrium, cyclic processes are possible which extract work from the bath. Conditions are put forward under which perpetuum mobility of the second kind, having one or several work extraction cycles, enter the realm of condensed matter physics. Fourth, it follows that the equivalence between different formulations of the second law (e.g., those by Clausius and Thomson) can be violated at low temperatures. These effects are the consequence of quantum entanglement in the presence of the slightly off-equilibrium nature of the thermal bath, and become important when the characteristic quantum time scale variant Planck's over 2pi /k(B)T is larger than or comparable to other time scales of the system. They show that there is no general consensus between standard thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. The known agreements occur only due to the weak coupling limit, which does not pertain to low temperatures. Experimental setups for testing the effects are discussed.
It is known that the origin of the deviations from standard thermodynamics proceed from the strong coupling to the bath. Here, it is shown that these deviations are related to the power spectrum of the bath. Specifically, it is shown that the system thermal-equilibrium-state cannot be characterized by the canonical Boltzmann's distribution in quantum mechanics. This is because the uncertainty principle imposed a lower bound of the dispersion of the total energy of the system that is dominated by the spectral density of the bath. However, in the classical case, for a wide class of systems that interact via central forces with pairwise-self-interacting environment, the system thermal equilibrium state is exactly characterized by the canonical Boltzmann distribution. As a consequence of this analysis and taking into account all energy scales in the system and reservoir interaction, an effective coupling to the environment is introduced. Sample computations in different regimes predicted by this effective coupling are shown. Specifically, in the strong coupling effective regime, the system exhibits deviations from standard thermodynamics and in the weak coupling effective regime, quantum features such as stationary entanglement are possible at high temperatures. Moreover, it is known that the spectrum of thermal baths depends on the non-Markovian character. Hence, non-Markovian interactions have a important role in the thermal equilibrium state of physical systems. For example, in quantum optomechanics is looked up to cool the mechanical system through an auxiliary system which generally is a cavity. This cooling process takes into account the non-Markovian interaction and as it is shown here, it is more effective than if we use only the Markovian approximation in the equation of motion for the different modes.
The dissipative dynamics of a quantum Brownian particle is studied for different types of environment. We derive analytic results for the time evolution of the mean energy of the system for Ohmic, sub-Ohmic, and super-Ohmic environments, without performing the Markovian approximation. Our results allow one to establish a direct link between the form of the environmental spectrum and the thermalization dynamics. This in turn leads to a natural explanation of the microscopic physical processes ruling the system time evolution both in the short-time non-Markovian region and in the long-time Markovian one. Our comparative study of thermalization for different environments sheds light on the physical contexts in which non-Markovian dissipation effects are dominant.