Role of correlations in the thermalization of quantum systems
Quantum Physics
2012-11-27 v1
Abstract
We investigate the equilibration and thermalization properties of quantum systems interacting with a finite dimensional environment. By exploiting the concept of time averaged states, we introduce a completely positive map which allows to describe in a quantitative way the dependence of the equilibrium state on the initial condition. Our results show that the thermalization of quantum systems is favored if the dynamics induces small system-environment correlations, as well as small changes in the environment, as measured by the trace distance.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1207.3700,
title = {Role of correlations in the thermalization of quantum systems},
author = {A. Smirne and E. -M. Laine and H. -P. Breuer and J. Piilo and B. Vacchini},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1207.3700},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
15 pages, 2 figures