Reentrant classicality of a damped system

Abstract

For a free particle, the coupling to its environment can be the relevant mechanism to induce quantum behavior as the temperature is lowered. We study general linear environments with a spectral density proportional to ω^s at low frequencies and consider in particular the specific heat of the free damped particle. For super-Ohmic baths with s>=2, a reentrant classical behavior is found. As the temperature is lowered, the specific heat decreases from the classical value of k_B/2, thereby indicating the appearence of quantum effects. However, the classical value of the specific heat is restored as the temperature approaches zero. This surprising behavior is due to the suppressed density of bath degrees of freedom at low frequencies. For s<2, the specific heat at zero temperature increases linearly with s from -k_B/2 to k_B/2. An Ohmic bath, s=1, is thus very special in the sense that it represents the only case where the specific heat vanishes at zero temperature.

6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Finite quantum dissipation: the challenge of obtaining specific heat
• Specific heat anomalies of open quantum systems
• The Third Law of Quantum Thermodynamics in the Presence of Anomalous Couplings
• Anomaly in the heat capacity of Kondo superconductors
• Numerical renormalization group calculation of impurity internal energy and specific heat of quantum impurity models

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• Damped oscillators within the general theory of Casimir and van der Waals forces
• Anomalies in the specific heat of a free damped particle: The role of the cutoff in the spectral density of the coupling
• Casimir-Lifshitz interaction between bodies integrated in a microelectromechanical/nanoelectromechanical quantum damped oscillator