Abstract
We introduce a generalized classical model of Brownian motion for describing thermal relaxation processes which is thermodynamically consistent. Applying the canonical quantization to this model, a quantum equation for the density operator is obtained. This equation has a thermal equilibrium state as its stationary solution, but the time evolution is not necessarily a Completely Positive and Trace-Preserving (CPTP) map. In the application to the harmonic oscillator potential, however, the requirement of the CPTP map is shown to be satisfied by choosing parameters appropriately and then our equation reproduces a Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-Lindblad (GKSL) equation satisfying the detailed balance condition. This result suggests a quantum-classical correspondence in thermal relaxation processes and will provide a new insight to the study of decoherence.
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