On thermodynamical couplings of quantum mechanics and macroscopic systems

Abstract

Pure quantum mechanics can be formulated as a Hamiltonian system in terms of the Liouville equation for the density matrix. Dissipative effects are modeled via coupling to a macroscopic system, where the coupling operators act via commutators. Following Öttinger (2010) we use the GENERIC framework to construct thermodynamically consistent evolution equations as a sum of a Hamiltonian and a gradient-flow contribution, which satisfy a particular non-interaction condition: q̇ = J(q)DE(q) + K(q)DS(q). We give three applications of the theory. First, we consider a finite-dimensional quantum system that is coupled to a finite number of simple heat baths, each of which is described by a scalar temperature variable. Second, we model quantum system given by a one-dimensional Schrödinger operator connected to a onedimensional heat equation on the left and on the right. Finally, we consider thermoopto-electronics, where the Maxwell-Bloch system of optics is coupled to the energydrift-diffusion system for semiconductor electronics.