Nonlinear momentum relaxation of an impurity in a harmonic chain

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A microscopic derivation of the generalized Langevin equation for arbitrary powers of the momentum of an impurity in a harmonic chain is presented. As a direct consequence of the Gaussian character of the conditional momentum distribution function, nonlinear momentum coupling effects are absent for this system and the Langevin equation takes on a particularly simple form. The kernels which characterize the decay of higher powers of the impurity momentum depend on the ratio of the masses of the impurity and bath particles, in contrast to the situation for the momentum Langevin equation for this system. The simplicity of the harmonic chain dynamics is exploited in order to investigate several features of the relaxation, such as the factorization approximation for time-dependent correlation functions and the decay of the kinetic energy autocorrelation function.