WAVE-EQUATION FOR DISSIPATIVE MOTION

From a quantized many-body system a wave equation for the motion of a particle linearly coupled to a heat bath is derived. The effective Hamiltonian describing the motion of the single particle is explicitly time dependent, and for a quadratic potential, has a simple dependence on the initial position and momentum of the particle. For the case of dissipative harmonic motion, a time-dependent wave equation is derived and the ground-state wave function is determined. It is also shown that if the equations of motion for the many-body system is Galilean invariant, the reduced form of equation of motion for the single particle is not. However a generalized form of transformation for the position and momentum operators, to a coordinate system moving with constant velocity, is obtained, which reduces to the Galilean transformation when the coupling to the dissipative system is turned off.