How hot can a heat bath get? (Q1048132)

A model of two Hamiltonian particles subject to a common potential \(V_1\), interacting through a harmonic force with potential \(V_2\) and in contact with two Langevin heat reservoirs is analyzed. One of them is at finite temperature whereas the other one has no friction term so that it is assumed to be at ``infinite temperature''. This is closely related to a toy model for heat conduction previously explored by other authors, but without friction term in one of the particles, and is used here to explore an extreme situation in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. A full picture of the long-time behaviour of such a system is provided. In particular, the existence/non-existence of a non-equilibrium steady state is examined, the precise tail behaviour of the energy in such a state is studied, and the speed of convergence toward the steady state. These topics are far from obvious for this system, because of the lack of dissipation in one of the particles, and therefore a main question of interest is to understand the global mechanism of energy dissipation. Furthermore, even if a stationary state exists, the distribution function is expected to be very different from an exponential in the energy, since one of the baths is at an ``infinite'' temperature. Thus, it must be carefully explored. To simplify the analysis it is assumed that \(V_1\) is an even function of the form \(V_1(x) = |x|^{2k}/k\), plus a remainder term, with the exponent \(k\) describing the stiffness of the individual oscillators. Despite its apparent simplicity, this model is seen to exhibit a surprisingly rich variety of long time behaviours. If the coupling potential \(V_2\) grows at least as fast at infinity as \(V_1\) and the latter grows at least linearly with \(x\), the solution is unique and its transition probabilities converge to it at exponential speed. In contrast, when \(V_1\) grows faster than \(V_2\) at infinity, the interaction between particles is suppressed at high energy. In this regime, the tails of the energy in the stationary state can be either algebraic, fractional exponential, or exponential. Correspondingly, the speed of convergence to the stationary state can be either algebraic, stretched exponential or exponential. The author finds that there are five different critical values of \(k\) (\(0, 1/2, 1\), \(4/3\), and \(2\)) that separate these qualitatively different behaviours regarding the integrability properties of the invariant measure and the speed of convergence of transition probabilities towards it. This is an interesting and surprising result which reveals the richness of the dynamical properties of this seemingly simple system.