Thermodynamic anomaly of the free damped quantum particle: the bath perspective

Abstract

A possible definition of the specific heat of open quantum systems is based on the reduced partition function of the system. For a free damped quantum particle, it has been found that under certain conditions, this specific heat can become negative at low temperatures. In contrast to the conventional approaches focusing on the system degree of freedom, here we concentrate on the changes induced in the environment when the system is coupled to it. Our analysis is carried out for an Ohmic environment consisting of harmonic oscillators and allows to identify the mechanism by which the specific heat becomes negative. Furthermore, the formal condition for the occurrence of a negative specific heat is given a physical interpretation in terms of the total mass of bath oscillators and the system mass.

7 pages, 1 figure, final version after one round of refereeing

References in corpus (17)

• Colloquium. Quantum Fluctuation Relations: Foundations and Applications
• Fluctuation Theorem for Arbitrary Open Quantum Systems
• Fundamental Aspects of Quantum Brownian Motion
• Finite quantum dissipation: the challenge of obtaining specific heat
• Specific heat anomalies of open quantum systems
• Experiment and theory in the Casimir effect
• Thermodynamics of a subensemble of a canonical ensemble
• Information and entropy in quantum Brownian motion: Thermodynamic entropy versus von Neumann entropy
• Recent Developments in the Casimir Effect
• Thermodynamics and Fluctuation Theorems for a Strongly Coupled Open Quantum System: An Exactly Solvable Case
• On the Casimir entropy for a ball in front of a plane
• Thermodynamic anomalies in open quantum systems: Strong coupling effects in the isotropic XY model
• Low temperature Thermodynamics in the Context of Dissipative Diamagnetism
• Casimir Energy and Entropy in the Sphere--Sphere Geometry
• Effective thermodynamics of strongly coupled qubits
• Anomaly in the heat capacity of Kondo superconductors
• The Third Law of Quantum Thermodynamics in the Presence of Anomalous Couplings

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Quantum dynamics of the damped harmonic oscillator
• Quantum Thermodynamics for Driven Dissipative Bosonic Systems
• Disentangling geometric and dissipative origins of negative Casimir entropies
• The Ohmic two-state system from the perspective of the interacting resonant level model: Thermodynamics and transient dynamics
• Numerical renormalization group calculation of impurity internal energy and specific heat of quantum impurity models
• Statistical Entropy of Open Quantum Systems
• Thermodynamic anomalies in the presence of dissipation: from the free particle to the harmonic oscillator
• Reentrant classicality of a damped system
• Path-integral approach to the thermodynamics of bosons with memory: Partition function and specific heat
• A Langevin canonical approach to the dynamics of chiral two level systems. Thermal averages and heat capacity
• Anomalies in the specific heat of a free damped particle: The role of the cutoff in the spectral density of the coupling
• Free energy of a charged oscillator in a magnetic field and coupled to a heat bath through the momentum variables
• Statistical physics of flux-carrying Brownian particles
• Path-integral approach to the thermodynamics of bosons with memory: Density and correlation functions