Test particle in a quantum gas

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2001 Jun;63(6 Pt 2):066115. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.63.066115. Epub 2001 May 22.

Abstract

A master equation with a Lindblad structure is derived, which describes the interaction of a test particle with a macroscopic system and is expressed in terms of the operator valued dynamic structure factor of the system. In the case of a free Fermi or Bose gas the result is evaluated in the Brownian limit, thus obtaining a single generator master equation for the description of quantum Brownian motion in which the correction due to quantum statistics is explicitly calculated. The friction coefficients for Boltzmann and Bose or Fermi statistics are compared.