Path Integrals and Their Application to Dissipative Quantum Systems

Abstract

Introduction Path Integrals - Introduction - Propagator - Free Particle - Path Integral Representation of Quantum Mechanics - Particle on a Ring - Particle in a Box - Driven Harmonic Oscillator - Semiclassical Approximation - Imaginary Time Path Integral Dissipative Systems - Introduction - Environment as Collection of Harmonic Oscillators - Effective Action Damped Harmonic Oscillator - Partition Function - Ground State Energy and Density of States - Position Autocorrelation FunctionComment: 55 pages, 13 figures. To be published in "Coherent Evolution in Noisy Environments", Lecture Notes in Physics (http://link.springer.de/series/lnpp/) (Springer Verlag, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York