A finite number of harmonic oscillators coupled to infinitely many environment oscillators is fundamental to the problem of understanding quantum dissipation of a small system immersed in a large environment. Exact operator solution as a function of time is given to this problem, by using diagonalized dynamical variable of the entire system, the small system plus the environment. The decay law of prepared initial configuration is worked out in greatest detail. A clear separation of the exponential- and the power-law decay period is made possible by our method. Behavior of physical quantities at asymptotically late times can be understood in terms of the overlap probability of the system variable with the diagonal variable of the entire system.
A finite number of harmonic oscillators coupled to infinitely many environment oscillators is fundamental to the problem of understanding quantum dissipation of a small system immersed in a large environment. Exact operator solution as a function of time is given to this problem, by using diagonalized dynamical variable of the entire system, the small system plus the environment. The decay law of prepared initial configuration is worked out in greatest detail. A clear separation of the exponential- and the power-law decay period is made possible by our method. Behavior of physical quantities at asymptotically late times can be understood in terms of the overlap probability of the system variable with the diagonal variable of the entire system.
Starting from the formal solution to the Heisenberg equation, we revisit an universal model for a quantum open system with a harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a boson bath. The analysis of the decay process for a Fock state and a coherent state demonstrate that this method is very useful in dealing with the problems in decay process of the open system. For finite temperatures, the calculations of the reduced density matrix and the mean excitation number for the open system show that an initial coherent state will evolve into a temperature-dependant coherent state after tracing over the bath variables. Also in short-time limit, a temperature-dependant effective Hamiltonian for the open system characterizes the decay process of the open system.
We study the dissipative quantum harmonic oscillator with general nonthermal preparations of the harmonic oscillator bath. The focus is on equilibration of the oscillator in the long-time limit and the additional requirements for thermalization. Our study is based on the exact solution of the microscopic model obtained by means of operator equations of motion, which provides us with the time evolution of the central oscillator density matrix in terms of the propagating function. We find a hierarchy of conditions for thermalization, together with the relation of the asymptotic temperature to the energy distribution in the initial bath state. We discuss the presence and absence of equilibration for the example of an inhomogeneous chain of harmonic oscillators, and we illustrate the general findings about thermalization for the nonthermal environment that results from a quench.
Quantum dissipation in a thermal environment is investigated, using the path-integral approach. The reduced density matrix of the harmonic oscillator system coupled to a thermal bath of oscillators is derived for an arbitrary spectrum of bath oscillators. Time evolution and the end point of the two-body decay of unstable particles are then elucidated: After early transient times unstable particles undergo the exponential decay, followed by the power-law decay and finally ending in a mixed state of residual particles containing contributions from both on and off the mass shell, whose abundance does not suffer from the Boltzmann suppression.
In many physical situations the behavior of a quantum system is affected by interaction with a larger environment. We develop, using the method of an influence functional, how to deduce the density matrix of the quantum system incorporating the effect of environment. After introducing the characterization of the environment by spectral weight, we first devise schemes to approximate the spectral weight, and then a perturbation method in field theory models, in order to approximately describe the environment. All of these approximate models may be classified as extended Ohmic models of dissipation whose differences are in the high frequency part. The quantum system we deal with in the present work is a general class of harmonic oscillators with an arbitrary time-dependent frequency. The late time behavior of the system is well described by an approximation that employs a localized friction in the dissipative part of the correlation function appearing in the influence functional. The density matrix of the quantum system is then determined in terms of a single classical solution obtained with the time-dependent frequency. With this one can compute the entropy, the energy distribution function, and other physical quantities of the system in a closed form. A specific application is made to the case of a periodically varying frequency. This dynamical system has a remarkable property when the environmental interaction is switched off: The effect of the parametric resonance gives rise to an exponential growth of the populated number in higher excitation levels, or particle production in field theory models. The effect of the environment is investigated for this dynamical system and it is demonstrated that there exists a critical strength of the friction for the parametric effect. In the model of a periodically oscillating field coupled to a system quantum field, it is verified that the parametric effect occurs in medium, with a somewhat diminished rate, if the relaxation time scale of the system field towards thermalization given by the friction term is larger than the time scale of the coherent parametric amplification. The effect persists until the back reaction against the periodic oscillation stops particle production. The resulting energy distribution of produced particles described by a universal function deviates from the thermal one, having an average energy that exponentially increases with time. The dynamical system driven by the parametric oscillator thus maintains and does not lose its quantum nature even in thermal bath. In the present work analytic formulas of how physical quantities behave at late times both in the high and in the low temperature regions are given, along with the results of a numerical computation displaying time evolution.
Open quantum systems have drawn attention over decades due to its applicability in the foundation of theoretical physics, e.g. statistical mechanics, quantum mechanics and condensed matter physics. The dynamics of open quantum systems has been described as separate entities from their surrounding environment that consists of a very large number of modes, somehow coupled to the mode of the system. Even though the exact solution of the dynamical behavior of the system is impossible to calculate, we obtain a tentative solution using the crucial Markov approximation. The input-output formalism of the quantum Langevin equation (QLE) has been considered as a useful tool which provides a semi-classical description of the dynamics of the system, whereas the master equation provides a complete picture of the dynamics of the system expressed in terms of density matrix. While studying the dynamics of nonlinear system/environment coupling using QLE, we see, for a small value of external field, that the steady state system field does not change much from the steady state field obtained in the absence of nonlinear dissipation. However, in a case where a stronger external field is applied, we see that the deviation becomes substantial from the solution of linear system. We also see that the nonlinear coupling introduces significant difference in the cavity fluctuation spectrum. The description, therefore, provides a potential explanation of parametric effects in terms of nonlinear dissipation phenomena associated with the nonlinear coupling. Even though the theories developed in the context of open quantum systems have proven to be powerful tools, they do not provide a satisfactory platform to be implemented on non-linear Hamiltonians. We often approximate it by linearizing over nonlinear steady state field amplitude, and therefore, the interesting effects are often overlooked. The limitation of the analytics provokes us to simulate open quantum dynamics numerically. The numerical method consists of transformation of the environmental degrees of freedom to a one-dimensional many-body chain, and the computational technique includes numerical diagonalization and renormalization process. The time-adaptive density matrix renormalisation group (t-DMRG) is known as one of the most powerful techniques for the simulation of strongly-correlated many-body quantum systems. In this thesis, along with the theoretical modeling, we implement DMRG numerical scheme for the simulation of canonical S/B model by mapping it to one-dimensional harmonic chain with nearest neighbor interactions, and use the method to investigate the dynamics of the free dissipative system. The thermalization of open quantum systems is also studied by generating minimally entangled typical thermal states (METTS) through imaginary time evolution, and real-time evolving an empty system in the presence of the thermal bath. Further, we simulate coherently driven free dissipative Kerr nonlinear system numerically using Euler's method by solving Heisenberg equation of motion and t-DMRG algorithm, and demonstrate how the numerical results are analogous to classical bistability. By comparing with analytics, we see that the DMRG numerics is analogous to the quantum-mechanical exact solution obtained by mapping the equation of motion of the density matrix of the system to a Fokker-Plank equation. The comparison between two different numerical techniques shows that the semi-classical Euler's method determines the dynamics of the system field of one among two coherent branches, whereas DMRG numerics gives the superposition of both of them. Hence, DMRG-determined time dynamics undergoes generating non-classical states. Our approach of dealing with nonlinearity represents an important contribution in the developments of technique to study the dynamical and steady-state behavior of open quantum systems, which is a fundamental aspect of quantum physics.
The open driven quantum harmonic oscillator is studied for three different possible mechanisms of driving; a generalization of the forced oscillator, driving due to a time-dependent coupling to a two-level system, and driving due to an adiabatic modulation of the frequency. The first case encompasses all possible configurations going from the standard forced harmonic oscillator to the classical pumping type of driving typically used in quantum optics. In the second case, an additional two-level system, coupled to the oscillator at a time-varying rate, is assumed and the reduced dynamics of the oscillator and the qubit is examined. In the driving due to adiabatic modulation, the dynamics of a harmonic oscillator whose frequency slowly varies in time is studied. The study done in this paper is focused on a harmonic type of driving, although the solutions are derived for an arbitrary type of driving. In all the cases, the oscillator is assumed to be in contact with a zero- or finite-temperature environment, which provides dissipation to the system. The treatment done in this paper is fully analytic and the derivation of the solutions is based on the employment of the double Fourier transform of the Wigner function.