Reservoir effects on the temperature dependence of the relaxation to equilibrium of three simple quantum systems

A.A. Ierides and V.M. Kenkre

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2018, vol. 503, issue C, 9-25

Abstract: The approach to thermal equilibrium of each of three simple quantum systems in interaction with a reservoir is analyzed by calculating the time evolution of an observable appropriate for each system. Two types of interaction with the reservoir are considered: a single-phonon modulation of the interaction matrix element and a multiphonon interaction arising from a polaronic transformation for a given single-phonon, but strong, modulation of energy or frequency. The methodology employed is a recent formalism based on a coarse-grained generalized master equation. Interesting results are obtained for the multiphonon case including a nonmonotonic dependence of the time-dependent observables in the multiphonon system as the temperature is varied. Such a result does not appear in the single-phonon case, i.e., for weak coupling. In addition to contributing towards the understanding of the detail in the approach to thermal equilibrium, the analysis has practical applications to the vibrational relaxation of molecules embedded in phonon baths and to the transport of charge in crystals subjected to electric fields strong enough to lead to the formation of Stark ladders.

Keywords: Approach to thermal equilibrium; Nonmonotonic temperature dependence; Multiphonon; Single-phonon; Vibrational relaxation; Polaronic transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437118302966
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:503:y:2018:i:c:p:9-25

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2018.02.210

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().