Abstract
We study the quantum dynamics of the simplest dissipative system, a particle moving in a constant external field and interacting with a bath of harmonic oscillators with Ohmic spectral density. Applying the main idea and methods developed in our recent work [L. H. Yu and C. P. Sun, Phys. Rev. A 49, 592 (1994)] to this system, we obtain the simple and exact solutions for the coordinate operator of the system in the Heisenberg picture and the wave function of the composite system of the system and the bath in the Schr\"odinger picture. An effective Hamiltonian for the dissipative system is explicitly derived from these solutions. The meaning of the wave function described by this effective Hamiltonian is clarified by analyzing the effect of the Brownian motion. In particular, the general effective Hamiltonian for an arbitrary potential is directly derived with this method for the case when the Brownian motion can be ignored. Using this effective Hamiltonian, we show an interesting result that the dissipation suppresses the wave-packet spreading.
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