English

Collisional Quantum Brownian Motion

Quantum Physics 2015-05-13 v2

Abstract

We derive a quantum master equation from first principles to describe friction in one dimensional, collisional Brownian motion. We are the first to avoid an ill-defined square of the Dirac delta function by using localized wave packets rather than plane waves. Solving the Schr\"odinger equation for two colliding particles, we discover that the previously found position diffusion is not a physical process, but an artifact of the approximation of a coarse grained time scale, which in turn is needed to find Markkovian dynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0905.3233,
  title  = {Collisional Quantum Brownian Motion},
  author = {I. Kamleitner and J. Cresser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0905.3233},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

5 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:04:06.656Z