We develop an approach to calculate the admittance of effectively
one-dimensional open quantum systems in random phase approximation. The
stationary, unperturbed system is described within the Landauer-B\"uttiker
formalism taking into account the Coulomb interaction in the Hartree
approximation. The dynamic changes in the effective potential are calculated
microscopically from the charge-charge correlation function resulting from the
stationary scattering states. We provide explicit RPA-expressions for the
quantum admittance. As a first example the case of a quantum capacitor is
considered where we can derive a small-frequency expansion for the admittance
which lends itself to an experimental testing of the theory. A comparison of
the low-frequency expansion with the complete RPA-expression shows that for a
quantum capacitor a simple classical equivalent circuit with
frequency-independent elements does not describe satisfactorily the
quantum-admittance with increasing the frequency.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure