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Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics

Binary collision model for quantum Brownian motion

Stefan I. Tsonchev, Philip Pechukas

Published Jun 1, 2000• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A binary collision model for phenomena of quantum dissipation is developed. Unlike the harmonic oscillator model, widely used for over thirty years, this model assumes nonlinear coupling between system and environment, and is applicable to both bosonic and fermionic baths. The system interacts with an ideal bath through binary collisions only. Solutions for the classical and quantum-mechanical problems in the case of free Brownian motion are presented, and the quantum-classical correspondence for nonequilibrium processes is established. It is shown that in the Brownian motion limit the two models lead to identical dynamical behavior, provided the coupling coefficients in the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian are temperature dependent. For cases of bath particles of finite mass and number the two models lead to different results. Linear response theory for the model is developed, and the results are compared with those for the harmonic oscillator model. At the end, possible applications of the model are suggested.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.61.6171

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A binary collision model for phenomena of quantum dissipation is developed. Unlike the harmonic oscillator model, widely used for over thirty years, this model assumes nonlinear coupling between system and environment, and is applicable to both bosonic and fermionic baths. The system interacts with an ideal bath through binary collisions only. Solutions for the classical and quantum-mechanical problems in the case of free Brownian motion are presented, and the quantum-classical correspondence for nonequilibrium processes is established. It is shown that in the Brownian motion limit the two models lead to identical dynamical behavior, provided the coupling coefficients in the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian are temperature dependent. For cases of bath particles of finite mass and number the two models lead to different results. Linear response theory for the model is developed, and the results are compared with those for the harmonic oscillator model. At the end, possible applications of the model are suggested.
In the frames of classical mechanics the generalized Langevin equation is derived for an arbitrary mechanical subsystem coupled to the harmonic bath of a solid. A time-acting temperature operator is introduced for the quantum Klein-Kramers and Smoluchowski equations, accounting for the effect of the quantum thermal bath oscillators. The model of Brownian emitters is theoretically studied and the relevant evolutionary equations for the probability density are derived. The Schrodinger equation is explained via collisions of the target point particles with the quantum force carriers, transmitting the fundamental interactions between the point particles. Thus, electrons and other point particles are no waves and the wavy chapter of quantum mechanics originated for the force carriers. A stochastic Lorentz-Langevin equation is proposed to describe the underlaying Brownian-like motion of the point particles in quantum mechanics. Considering the Brownian dynamics in the frames of the Bohmian mechanics, the density functional Bohm-Langevin equation is proposed, and the relevant Smoluchowski-Bohm equation is derived. A nonlinear master equation is proposed by proper quantization of the classical Klein-Kramers equation. Its equilibrium solution in the exact canonical Gibbs density operator, while the well-known Caldeira-Leggett equation is simply a linearization at high temperature. In the case of a free quantum Brownian particles, a new law for the spreading of the wave packet it discovered, which represents the quantum generalization of the classical Einstein law of Brownian motion. A new projector operator is proposed for the collapse of the wave function of a quantum particle moving in a classical environment. Its application results in dissipative Schrodinger equations, as well as in a new form of dissipative Liouville equation in classical mechanics.
We study a new model for treating quantum dissipative systems, in which the bath is modeled as a collection of spins coupled to the system of interest. We develop a quasiclassical method to study this model, approximating the quantum Heisenberg equations by the classical ones, supplemented with stochastic initial conditions carefully chosen so that the results obtained from the classical equations are as close as possible to the quantum results. Using this method we compare the dynamics of such a spin–spin system with that of a spin–boson system, in which the bath is modeled as a collection of harmonic oscillators. We verify numerically that when the system-bath coupling is spread over many bath spins (the Brownian motion limit), the spin–spin model can be mapped on the spin–boson model (although with a temperature dependent spectral density). We also demonstrate that the two dissipative models are qualitatively very different in a non-Brownian motion regime.
We generalize the classical theory of Brownian motion so as to reckon with non-Markovian effects on both Klein-Kramers and Smoluchowski equations. For a free particle and a harmonic oscillator, it is shown that such non-Markovian effects account for the differentiability of the Brownian trajectories as well as the breakdown of the energy equipartition of statistical mechanics at short times in some physical situations. This non-Markovian approach is also extended to look at anomalous diffusion. Next, we bring in the dynamical-quantization method for investigating open quantum systems, which does consist in quantizing the classical Brownian motion starting directly from our non-Markovian Klein-Kramers and Smoluchowski equations, without alluding to any model Hamiltonian. Accordingly, quantizing our non-Markovian Klein-Kramers in phase space gives rise to a non-Markovian quantum master equation in configuration space, whereas quantizing our non-Markovian Smoluchowski equation in configuration space leads to a non-Markovian quantum Smoluchowski equation in phase space. In addition, it is worth noticing that non-Markovian quantum Brownian motion takes place in presence of a generic environment (e.g. a non-thermal quantum fluid). As far as the special case of a heat bath comprising of quantum harmonic oscillators is concerned, a non-Markovian Caldeira-Leggett master equation and a thermal quantum Smoluchowski equation are derived and extended to bosonic and fermionic heat baths valid for all temperatures.
We derive and analyze the Born-Markov master equation for a quantum harmonic oscillator interacting with a bath of independent two-level systems. This hitherto virtually unexplored model plays a fundamental role as one of the four ``canonical'' system-environment models for decoherence and dissipation. To investigate the influence of further couplings of the environmental spins to a dissipative bath, we also derive the master equation for a harmonic oscillator interacting with a single spin coupled to a bosonic bath. Our models are experimentally motivated by quantum-electromechanical systems and micron-scale ion traps. Decoherence and dissipation rates are found to exhibit temperature dependencies significantly different from those in quantum Brownian motion. In particular, the systematic dissipation rate for the central oscillator decreases with increasing temperature and goes to zero at zero temperature, but there also exists a temperature-independent momentum-diffusion (heating) rate.
We develop a perturbation scheme to treat the dynamics of a quantum Brownian particle (coordinate xxx) coupled nonlinearly to a bath of oscillators (coordinates qn{q}_{n}qn​) with an interaction action in the form $\ensuremath{\lambda}f(x){q}_{n}^{k}$. We derive the influence functionals for the k=2,3,4k=2, 3, 4k=2,3,4 cases to order ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}^{2}$ and derive the master equations for the special cases of local dissipation and white noise, as well as the general cases of nonlocal dissipation and colored noise for f(x)=xandx2f(x)=x \mathrm{and} {x}^{2}f(x)=xandx2. We show that a generalized fluctuation-dissipation relation exists between the lthl\mathrm{th}lth-order noise kernels of the kthk\mathrm{th}kth-order coupling and their corresponding dissipation kernels.
We study quantum non-Markovian dynamics of the Caldeira-Leggett model, a prototypical model for quantum Brownian motion describing a harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a reservoir of harmonic oscillators. Employing the exact analytical solution of this model one can determine the size of memory effects for arbitrary couplings, temperatures, and frequency cutoffs. Here, quantum non-Markovianity is defined in terms of the flow of information between the open system and its environment, which is quantified through the Bures metric as distance measure for quantum states. This approach allows us to discuss quantum memory effects in the whole range from weak to strong dissipation for arbitrary Gaussian initial states. A comparison of our results with the corresponding results for the spin-boson problem show a remarkable similarity in the structure of non-Markovian behavior of the two paradigmatic models.