Environment-dependent dissipation in quantum Brownian motion

J. Paavola, J. Piilo, K. -A. Suominen, S. Maniscalco

Published 2009-02-17, updated 2010-01-28Version 2

The dissipative dynamics of a quantum Brownian particle is studied for different types of environment. We derive analytic results for the time evolution of the mean energy of the system for Ohmic, sub-Ohmic and super-Ohmic environments, without performing the Markovian approximation. Our results allow to establish a direct link between the form of the environmental spectrum and the thermalization dynamics. This in turn leads to a natural explanation of the microscopic physical processes ruling the system time evolution both in the short-time non-Markovian region and in the long-time Markovian one. Our comparative study of thermalization for different environments sheds light on the physical contexts in which non-Markovian dissipation effects are dominant.