Gaussian ancillary bombardment
Abstract
We analyze in full detail the time evolution of an open Gaussian quantum system rapidly bombarded by Gaussian ancillae. As a particular case this analysis covers the thermalization (or not) of a harmonic oscillator coupled to a thermal reservoir made of harmonic oscillators. We derive general results for this scenario and apply them to the problem of thermalization. We show that only a particular family of system-environment couplings will cause the system to thermalize to the temperature of its environment. We discuss that if we want to understand thermalization as ensuing from the Markovian interaction of a system with the individual microconstituents of its (thermal) environment then the process of thermalization is not as robust as one might expect.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1802.08629,
title = {Gaussian ancillary bombardment},
author = {Daniel Grimmer and Eric Brown and Achim Kempf and Robert B. Mann and Eduardo Martin-Martinez},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.08629},
year = {2018}
}