Diffusion of a massive quantum particle coupled to a quasi-free thermal medium (Q535184)

The authors consider a quantum particle of mass of order \(\lambda^{-2}\) on the dimensional lattice in dimension \(d\geq 4\), coupled to a thermal medium through an interaction of strength \(\lambda\), linear in creation and annihilation operators. It is shown that in large time \(t \to \infty\), the probability density of the particle position becomes equivalent to the Gaussian diffusion kernel \[ \left( {1 \over 2\pi t} \right)^{d/2} ( \det D )^{-1/2} \exp \left( - {1 \over 2} \left( {x \over \sqrt{t}} \cdot D^{-1} {x \over \sqrt{t}} \right) \right) \] where \(D=D_\lambda\) is a diffusion matrix of order \(\lambda^2\). This is followed by an equipartition result on the asymptotic expectation value of the kinetic energy of the particle as \(\lambda\) tends to \(0\), and a decoherence result showing that the off-diagonal elements in the density matrix \(\rho_t ( x , y )\) of the system decrease rapidly in large time \(t\) as a function of \(|x-y|\).