Hamiltonian of mean force and a damped harmonic oscillator in an anisotropic medium

Abstract

The quantum dynamics of a damped harmonic oscillator is investigated in the presence of an anisotropic heat bath. The medium is modeled by a continuum of three dimensional harmonic oscillators and anisotropic coupling is treated by introducing tensor coupling functions. Starting from a classical Lagrangian, the total system is quantized in the framework of the canonical quantization. Following Fano technique, Hamiltonian of the system is diagonalized in terms of creation and annihilation operators that are linear combinations of the basic dynamical variables. Using the diagonalized Hamiltonian, the mean force internal energy, free energy and entropy of the damped oscillator are calculated.

From Brownian Motion Formalism to Fluctuation-Induced Force in a General Fluctuating Medium

“…In thermal equilibrium and in the framework of quantum Hamiltonian of mean force (QHMF) [31][32][33], the equilibrium free energy of a subsystem in contact with its environment is equal to the difference between the free energy of the total system and free energy of the solely its environment [31]. The key to overcome the calculation of this quantity is the QHMF.…”