The quantum Langevin equation is the Heisenberg equation of motion for the (operator) coordinate of a Brownian particle coupled to a heat bath. We give an elementary derivation of this equation for a simple coupled-oscillator model of the heat bath.

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It is shown that a system of coupled harmonic oscillators can be made a model of a heat bath. Thus a particle coupled harmonically to the bath and by an arbitrary force to a fixed center will (in an appropriate limit) exhibit Brownian motion. Both classical and quantum mechanical treatments are given.

Dispersion relations for dipolar modes propagating along a chain of metal nanoparticles are calculated by solving the full Maxwell equations, including radiation damping. The nanoparticles are treated as point dipoles, which means the results are valid only for a/d ≤ ⅓, where a is the particle radius and d the spacing. The discrete modes for a finite chain are first calculated, then these are mapped onto the dispersion relations appropriate for the infinite chain. Computed results are given for a chain of 50-nm diameter Ag spheres spaced by 75 nm. We find large deviations from previous quasistatic results: Transverse modes interact strongly with the light line. Longitudinal modes develop a bandwidth more than twice as large, resulting in a group velocity that is more than doubled. All modes for which k mode ≤ ω/c show strongly enhanced decay due to radiation damping.

The Hu-Paz-Zhang equation is a master equation for an oscillator coupled to a linear passive bath. It is exact within the assumption that the oscillator and bath are initially uncoupled . Here an exact general solution is obtained in the form of an expression for the Wigner function at time t in terms of the initial Wigner function. The result is applied to the motion of a Gaussian wave packet and to that of a pair of such wave packets. A serious divergence arising from the assumption of an initially uncoupled state is found to be due to the zero-point oscillations of the bath and not removed in a cutoff model. As a consequence, worthwhile results for the equation can only be obtained in the high temperature limit, where zero-point oscillations are neglected. In that limit closed form expressions for wave packet spreading and attenuation of coherence are obtained. These results agree within a numerical factor with those appearing in the literature, which apply for the case of a particle at zero temperature that is suddenly coupled to a bath at high temperature. On the other hand very different results are obtained for the physically consistent case in which the initial particle temperature is arranged to coincide with that of the bath

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The quantum Langevin equation is the Heisenberg equation of motion for the (operator) coordinate of a Brownian particle coupled to a heat bath. We give an elementary derivation of this equation for a simple coupled-oscillator model of the heat bath.

No abstract