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Physical Review A

Instabilities in thermal baths

Benjamin Fain

Published Nov 1, 1981• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The theory of relaxation processes is reviewed starting from first principles. The resulting equations of motion describing the temporal behavior of two subsystems---dynamic and dissipative---are discussed. In existing theories the dissipative system or a thermal bath is assumed to be in thermal equilibrium all the time. The basic aim of this paper is a derivation of the instability conditions of the thermal bath. For this purpose two specific models are examined. One is an ensemble of inhomogeneously broadened two-level systems coupled with harmonic excitations (phonons) and the other is the ensemble of homogeneously broadened two-level systems interacting with a phonon bath. Possible implications, including biological ones, of the derived instability conditions are mentioned.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.24.2685

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The theory of relaxation processes is reviewed starting from first principles. The resulting equations of motion describing the temporal behavior of two subsystems---dynamic and dissipative---are discussed. In existing theories the dissipative system or a thermal bath is assumed to be in thermal equilibrium all the time. The basic aim of this paper is a derivation of the instability conditions of the thermal bath. For this purpose two specific models are examined. One is an ensemble of inhomogeneously broadened two-level systems coupled with harmonic excitations (phonons) and the other is the ensemble of homogeneously broadened two-level systems interacting with a phonon bath. Possible implications, including biological ones, of the derived instability conditions are mentioned.
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The method of the nonequilibrium statistical operator developed by D. N. Zubarev is employed to analyze and derive generalized transport and kinetic equations. The degrees of freedom in solids can often be represented as a few interacting subsystems (electrons, spins, phonons, nuclear spins, etc.). Perturbation of one subsystem may produce a nonequilibrium state which is then relaxed to an equilibrium state due to the interaction between particles or with a thermal bath. The generalized kinetic equations were derived for a system weakly coupled to a thermal bath to elucidate the nature of transport and relaxation processes. It was shown that the "collision term" had the same functional form as for the generalized kinetic equations for the system with small interactions among particles. The applicability of the general formalism to physically relevant situations is investigated. It is shown that some known generalized kinetic equations (e.g. kinetic equation for magnons, Peierls equation for phonons) naturally emerges within the NSO formalism. The relaxation of a small dynamic subsystem in contact with a thermal bath is considered on the basis of the derived equations. The Schrödinger-type equation for the average amplitude describing the energy shift and damping of a particle in a thermal bath and the coupled kinetic equation describing the dynamic and statistical aspects of the motion are derived and analyzed. The equations derived can help in the understanding of the origin of irreversible behavior in quantum phenomena.
The method of the nonequilibrium statistical operator developed by D. N. Zubarev is employed to analyze and derive generalized transport and kinetic equations. The degrees of freedom in solids can often be represented as a few interacting subsystems (electrons, spins, phonons, nuclear spins, etc.). Perturbation of one subsystem may produce a nonequilibrium state which is then relaxed to an equilibrium state due to the interaction between particles or with a thermal bath. The generalized kinetic equations were derived for a system weakly coupled to a thermal bath to elucidate the nature of transport and relaxation processes. It was shown that the "collision term" had the same functional form as for the generalized kinetic equations for the system with small interactions among particles. The applicability of the general formalism to physically relevant situations is investigated. It is shown that some known generalized kinetic equations (e.g. kinetic equation for magnons, Peierls equation for phonons) naturally emerges within the NSO formalism. The relaxation of a small dynamic subsystem in contact with a thermal bath is considered on the basis of the derived equations. The Schrödinger-type equation for the average amplitude describing the energy shift and damping of a particle in a thermal bath and the coupled kinetic equation describing the dynamic and statistical aspects of the motion are derived and analyzed. The equations derived can help in the understanding of the origin of irreversible behavior in quantum phenomena.
A master equation for a quantum system coupled to a heat bath with stochastically fluctuating energy levels is derived by making use of the ensemble averaging and the averaging with respect to a stochastic process in the bath. Relaxation terms are determined in the Born approximation with respect to the system-bath interaction and the damping parameters related to a relaxation kernel are specified. In parallel with the spectral strength of the bath, the damping parameters determine the transient times for the Markovian description creating the physical origin of the slippage [A. Suarez, R. Sibey, and I. Oppenheim, J. Chem. Phys. 97, 5101 (1992)]. The influence of energy fluctuations of the bath is analyzed for a two-level system including the solution of the corresponding non-Markovian equation for the level population difference. The conditions for the formation of Boltzmann's thermal ratio between steady-state populations are evaluated as well.
A quantum-mechanical treatment of the dynamics of relaxation of a twolevel mode coupled to a thermal bath is presented. The Zwanzig-Mori projection-operator formalism is employed to derive exact equations of motion for the correlation function and the excess population , where and are the coordinate and number operators associated with the two-level mode. In the van Hove weak-coupling limit it is shown that |G ν|2 and Δn decay exponentially with time constants τ and τ′, respectively. Explicit expressions for τ and τ′ are determined and the relationship between them clearly established. The application of the model to the specific problem of the effects of vibrational relaxation on isotropic Raman spectral lineshapes in dense media is emphasized.
Thermalization has been shown to occur in a number of closed quantum many-body systems, but the description of the actual thermalization dynamics is prohibitively complex. Here, we present a model-in one and two dimensions-for which we can analytically show that the evolution into thermal equilibrium is governed by a Fokker-Planck equation derived from the underlying quantum dynamics. Our approach does not rely on a formal distinction of weakly coupled bath and system degrees of freedom. The results show that transitions within narrow energy shells lead to a dynamics which is dominated by entropy and establishes detailed balance conditions that determine both the eventual equilibrium state and the nonequilibrium relaxation to it.