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

Brownian parametric quantum oscillator with dissipation

Christine Zerbe, Peter Hänggi A

Published Aug 1, 1995• 72 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study the quantum fluctuational properties of a parametric oscillator with and without coupling to an Ohmic environment. After considering the momentum and coordinate variances as a function of initial squeezing for the undamped dynamics, we invoke the functional integral method to derive the fully exact reduced density matrix for parametric dissipative quantum Brownian motion, covering the whole temperature regime from T=0 up to the classical limit at room temperatures. Moreover, we present the exact result for the quantum master equation for both the density matrix and the corresponding Wigner function. The time evolution of the covariance matrix elements of damped quantum fluctuations is studied numerically. These variances undergo within the regime of global stability asymptotic, periodic oscillations. As an interesting result, we find that the minima of these oscillations fall below the corresponding thermal equilibrium values.

DOI
10.1103/physreve.52.1533

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We study the quantum fluctuational properties of a parametric oscillator with and without coupling to an Ohmic environment. After considering the momentum and coordinate variances as a function of initial squeezing for the undamped dynamics, we invoke the functional integral method to derive the fully exact reduced density matrix for parametric dissipative quantum Brownian motion, covering the whole temperature regime from T=0 up to the classical limit at room temperatures. Moreover, we present the exact result for the quantum master equation for both the density matrix and the corresponding Wigner function. The time evolution of the covariance matrix elements of damped quantum fluctuations is studied numerically. These variances undergo within the regime of global stability asymptotic, periodic oscillations. As an interesting result, we find that the minima of these oscillations fall below the corresponding thermal equilibrium values.
Open Quantum Brownian Motion (OQBM) is a new class of quantum Brownian motion in which the dynamics of the Brownian particle depend not only on interactions with a thermal environment but also on the state of its internal degrees of freedom. For an Ohmic bath spectral density with a Lorentz--Drude cutoff frequency at a high-temperature limit, we derive the Born--Markov master equation for the reduced density matrix of an open Brownian particle in a harmonic potential. The resulting master equation is written in phase-space representation using the Wigner function, and due to the separation of associated timescales in the high-damping limit, we perform adiabatic elimination of the momentum variable to obtain OQBM. We numerically solve the derived master equation for the reduced density matrix of the OQBM, using both Gaussian and non-Gaussian initial distributions. In each case, the OQBM dynamics converge to several Gaussian distributions. To gain physical insight into the studied system, we also plotted the dynamics of the off-diagonal element of the open quantum Brownian particle and found damped coherent oscillations. Finally, we investigated the time-dependent variance in the position of the OQBM walker and observed initial diffusive spreading, followed by a crossover to a finite steady-state value.
We revisit the model of a system made up of a Brownian quantum oscillator under the influence of an external classical force and linearly coupled to an environment made up of many quantum oscillators at zero or finite temperature. We show that the HPZ master equation for the reduced density matrix derived earlier [B.L. Hu, J.P. Paz, Y. Zhang, Phys. Rev. D 45, 2843 (1992)] with coefficients obtained from solutions of integro-differential equations can assume closed functional forms for a fairly general class of spectral densities of the environment at arbitrary temperature and coupling strength. As an illustration of these new results we solve the corresponding master equation and calculate, among other physical quantities, the uncertainty function whose late time behavior can be obtained fully. This produces a formula for investigating the standard quantum limit which is central to addressing many theoretical issues in macroscopic quantum phenomena and experimental concerns related to low temperature precision measurements. We find that any initial state always settles down to a Gaussian density matrix whose covariance is determined by the thermal reservoir and whose mean is determined by the external force. For more general spectra we show that the solution of the master equation can be reduced to solving for the motion of a classical parametric oscillator with parametric frequency determined by the unsolved for master equation coefficients. States in these systems experience evolution that is parametrically similar to the simpler evolution explicitly determined for in the case of Laurent-series spectra.
We revisit the model of a system made up of a Brownian quantum oscillator linearly coupled to an environment made up of many quantum oscillators at finite temperature. We show that the HPZ master equation for the reduced density matrix derived earlier [B.L. Hu, J.P. Paz, Y. Zhang, Phys. Rev. D 45, 2843 (1992)] has incorrectly specified coefficients for the case of nonlocal dissipation. We rederive the QBM master equation, correctly specifying all coefficients, and determine the position uncertainty to be free of excessive cutoff sensitivity. Our coefficients and solutions are reduced entirely to contour integration for analytic spectra at arbitrary temperature, coupling strength, and cut-off. As an illustration we calculate the master equation coefficients and solve the master equation for ohmic coupling (with finite cutoff) and example supra-ohmic and sub-ohmic spectral densities. We determine the effect of an external force on the quantum oscillator and also show that our representation of the master equation and solutions naturally extends to a system of multiple oscillators bilinearly coupled to themselves and the bath in arbitrary fashion. This produces a formula for investigating the standard quantum limit which is central to addressing many theoretical issues in macroscopic quantum phenomena and experimental concerns related to low temperature precision measurements. We find that in a dissipative environment, all initial states settle down to a Gaussian density matrix whose covariance is determined by the thermal reservoir and whose mean is determined by the external force. We specify the thermal covariance for the spectral densities we explore.
We consider a model of non-Markovian quantum Brownian motion that consists of a harmonic oscillator bilinearly coupled to a thermal bath, both via its position and via its momentum operators. We derive the master equation for such a model, and we solve the equations of motion for a generic Gaussian system state. We then investigate the resulting evolution of the first and second moments for both an Ohmic and a super-Ohmic spectral density. In particular, we show that, irrespective of the specific form of the spectral density, the coupling with the momentum enhances the dissipation experienced by the system, accelerating its relaxation to the equilibrium as well as modifying the asymptotic state of the dynamics. Eventually, we characterize explicitly the non-Markovianity of the evolution using a general criterion which relies on the positivity of the master equation coefficients.
We analyze the behavior of a damped quantum harmonic oscillator immersed in a heat bath with a nonlinear coupling. For this purpose, we construct a generalized master equation (GME) for the reduced density of the oscillator. We specialize the results for a quadratic coupling in the presence of a bosonic reservoir and an Ohmic dissipation model, analyzing the evolution equation for the mean value of the oscillator coordinate. In the asymptotic case we obtain a gain-loss master equation whose transition rates are polynomials in the number of quanta. No explicit solutions other than the equilibrium one can be written, since the standard methods do not apply. The equilibrium solution is investigated and the eigenvalues of the corresponding spectral problem are numerically computed to study the effect of the nonlinearity on the evolution of the system. By means of the Wigner transformation of the GME, we extract a third-order partial derivative equation that represents the semiclassical evolution of the damped oscillator. In the classical limit this is a nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation.