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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Continuum damping is an important phenomenon in infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian systems with continuous spectra, and appears in a wide variety of physical systems, from plasmas to condensed matter. One such system is the Caldeira-Leggett model, which describes a damped quantum harmonic oscillator through coupling to a heat bath. We derive an integral transformation from the Caldeira-Legget model to action-angle variables and show that the resulting normal form is equivalent to that of the linearized Vlasov-Poisson equation from plasma physics. We interpret the damping mechanism of the Caldeira-Leggett model as an analog of Landau damping in a plasma and conclude that phenomenon which occur in plasmas have analogs in the Caldeira-Leggett model and vice versa.
Host: Jerome Daligault, T-5, daligaul@lanl.gov