On the behaviour of a periodically forced and thermostatted harmonic chain (Q6123418)

The authors consider a chain consisting of \(n+1\) harmonic oscillators subjected on the right to a time dependent periodic force \(\mathcal{F}(t)\) while Langevin thermostats are attached at both endpoints of the chain. The configurations of the system is described by: \((\mathbf{q},\mathbf{p} )=(q_{0},\ldots ,q_{n},p_{0},\ldots ,p_{n})\in \Omega _{n}=\mathbb{R} ^{n+1}\times \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\), where the position \(q_{x}\) represents the relative displacement of an atom from a point \(x\) belonging to the integer lattice interval \(\mathbb{I}_{n}=\{0,\ldots ,n\}\) and \(p_{x}\) its respective momentum. The total energy is given by the Hamiltonian:\(\mathcal{H}_{n}( \mathbf{q},\mathbf{p})=\sum_{x=0}^{n}e_{x}(\mathbf{q},\mathbf{p})\), where the energy density is given at \(x\) by \(e_{x}(\mathbf{q},\mathbf{p})=\frac{ p_{x}^{2}}{2}+\frac{1}{2}(q_{x}-q_{x-1})^{2}+\frac{\omega _{0}^{2}q_{x}^{2}}{ 2}\), \(x\in \mathbb{I}_{n}\), with \(q_{-1}=q_{0}\). The microscopic dynamics of the process is given by \(\overset{.}{q}_{x}(t)=p_{x}(t)\), \(x\in \mathbb{I} _{n}\), \(\overset{.}{p}_{x}(t)=\Delta _{x}q_{x}-\omega _{0}^{2}q_{x}\), \(x\in \mathbb{I}_{n}^{o}=\{1,\ldots ,n\}\) and at the boundaries by \( dp_{0}(t)=q_{1}(t)-q_{0}(t)-\omega _{0}^{2}q_{0}dt-2\gamma -p_{0}(t)dt+\sqrt{ 4\gamma _{-}T_{-}}d\widetilde{w}_{-}(t)\), \(dp_{n}(t)=q_{n-1}(t)-q_{n}(t)- \omega _{0}^{2}q_{n}(t)dt+\mathcal{F}(t/\theta )dt-2\gamma _{+}p_{n}(t)dt+ \sqrt{4\gamma _{+}T_{+}}d\widetilde{w}_{+}(t)\), where \(\Delta q_{x}=q_{x+1}+q_{x-1}-2q_{x}\), \(x\in \mathbb{Z}\), \(\omega _{0}>0\) is a pinning constant, \(w_{-}(t)\) and \(w_{+}(t)\) two independent standard 1D Wiener processes, \(\gamma _{\pm }\) non-negative constants, \(\mathcal{F}(t)\) a force (a smooth periodic function of period 1), satisfying \(\int_{0}^{1} \mathcal{F}(t)dt=0\), \(\int_{0}^{1}\mathcal{F}(t)^{2}dt>0\), and \(\theta \) a parameter which rescales the period. The work done by the force on the system is given by \(W(n)=\frac{1}{\theta }\int_{0}^{\theta }\mathcal{F} (t/\theta )\overline{p}_{n}(t)dt\), where \(\overline{p}_{n}\) is the expectation of \(p_{n}\). They compute this work first assuming that \(\mathcal{ F}(t/\theta )=Fcos(\frac{2\pi }{\theta }t)\) and the limit when \(n\rightarrow +\infty \) in the cases where \(\frac{2\pi }{\theta }\) lies outside or inside the harmonic chain spectrum. They then draw computations on the work and on the mechanical component of the energy density in the case of of a general periodic force. The paper ends with computations concerning the energy currents given by \(\mathcal{G}_{t}e_{x}=j_{x-1,x}-j_{x,x+1}\), with \( j_{x,x+1}=-p_{x}(q_{x+1}-q_{x})\), if \(x\in \{0,\ldots ,n-1\}\).