Abstract
A quantum-mechanical treatment of the evolution of an anharmonic oscillator coupled to a heat bath is given. It is shown that for a certain class of anharmonic potentials the heat bath drives the oscillator to an equilibrium state, close to the quantum Gibbs state associated to the potential. Thus a partial proof is provided for a conjecture of R. Benguria and M. Kac.
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This paper contains part of the author's Ph.D. work, done at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Groningen State University, Groningen, the Netherlands.
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Maassen, H. Return to thermal equilibrium by the solution of a quantum Langevin equation. J Stat Phys 34, 239–261 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01770357
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01770357