The statistical mechanics of systems whose evolution is governed by mixed quantum-classical dynamics is investigated. The algebraic properties of the quantum-classical time evolution of operators and of the density matrix are examined and compared to those of full quantum mechanics. The equilibrium density matrix that appears in this formulation is stationary under the dynamics and a method for its calculation is presented. The response of a quantum-classical system to an external force which is applied from the distant past when the system is in equilibrium is determined. The structure of the resulting equilibrium time correlation function is examined and the quantum-classical limits of equivalent quantum time correlation functions are derived. The results provide a framework for the computation of equilibrium time correlation functions for mixed quantum-classical systems.
This paper establishes a natural quantum counterpart of weak equilibration for statistical ensembles in integrable systems. For quantum systems with pure point spectrum, single-time expectation values under unitary evolution are typically quasiperiodic, and hence generally do not admit a pointwise limit as
t→∞. To overcome this difficulty, we introduce a weighted time-averaging procedure and prove that the resulting averaged dynamics converge to the diagonal (dephased) equilibrium state. We further illustrate and validate the theoretical result through a three-spin quantum integrable model.
The dynamical evolution of an ultracold Bose gas distributed across the sites of an optical lattice is investigated theoretically in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. First, the focus is set on the evolution of squeezing correlations in the two mode system. It is shown that the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian do not exploit the full region of possible squeezing allowed by Heisenbergs uncertainty relation for number and phase fl uctuations. The development of nonclassical correlations and relative number squeezing is studied at the transition from the Josephson to the Fock regime. Comparing the full quantum evolution with classical statistical simulations allows us to identify quantum aspects of the squeezing formation. In the quantum regime, the measurement of squeezing allows us to distinguish even and odd total particle number states. Then, a far from equilibrium quantum field theory method, the so-called two-particle-irreducible effective action approach, is presented for the description of the dynamics in larger lattices. The resulting dynamics is compared to the classical statistical time evolution. The validity of the quantum field evolution is probed for various initial conditions in the classical regime.