Hans-Thomas Elze
Published 1997-10-30Version 1
Entropy generation in quantum sytems is tied to the existence of a nonclassical environment (heat bath or other) with which the system interacts. The continuous `measuring' of the open system by its environment induces decoherence of its wave function and entropy increase. Examples of nonrelativistic quantum Brownian motion and of interacting scalar fields illustrate these general concepts. It is shown that the Hartree-Fock approximation around the bare classical limit can lead to spurious semiquantum chaos, which may affect the determination of entropy production and thermalization also in other cases.
Comments: 22 pages including 4 figures; LaTex uses epsf and sprocl.sty file. - Invited talk, 5th Rio de Janeiro International Workshop on Relativistic Aspects of Nuclear Physics, August 1997; proceedings to be publ., T. Kodama et al., eds. (World Scientific)
Exact stochastic simulation of dissipation and non-Markovian effects in open quantum systems
Time-reversal symmetric resolution of unity without background integrals in open quantum systems
Quantum interference between independent reservoirs in open quantum systems
