Steady states of quantum Brownian motion and decomposition of quantum states into ensembles of Gaussian packets having a uniform position variance

Abstract

After replacing the reduced density matrix of a quantum harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a thermal bath by its ‘characteristic function’ (a non-negative definite function defined on the Heisenberg-Weyl group), the master equation of the reduced density matrix can be transformed into a first-order linear partial differential equation of the characteristic function. We derive stationary solutions for the Caldeira–Leggett (CL) master equation as well as for the late-time Hu–Paz–Zhang master equation, and examine the positivity problem for these solutions. In order to illustrate to what extent classical properties of quantum states of the damping oscillator emerge dynamically due to coupling to the environment, we discuss the problem of how and under what conditions a steady state predicted by the CL master equation could be expressed as a statistical mixture of Gaussian packets having a uniform position variance. Similar studies are carried out for the solutions of a Lindblad-form generalization of the CL master equation, where the positivity problem is certainly absent. Our results show that in the low-temperature regime the steady states predicted by the Lindblad-type master equation may depend on the damping strength of the bath and there are cases which may not show Gaussian-packet decomposition.