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Title: Solutions to Master equations of quantum Brownian motion in a general environment with external force

Journal Article · · Physical Review. D, Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology
OSTI ID:962282
 [1];  [2];  [2]
  1. Los Alamos National Laboratory
  2. UNIV OF MARYLAND

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.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
962282
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-08-07176; LA-UR-08-7176; PRVDAQ; TRN: US200919%%46
Journal Information:
Physical Review. D, Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, Journal Name: Physical Review. D, Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology; ISSN 1550-7998
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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