A Strongly Coupled Open System with Non-linear Bath: Fluctuation-Dissipation and Langevin Dynamics

Abstract: Study of Langevin dynamics and the fluctuation-dissipation relation (FDR) for a generic probe system (represented by a mass $M$), bilinearly coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators, has been a standard paradigm for a microscopic theory of stochastic processes for several decades. The question that we probe in this paper is, how far the structure of the classical FDR is robust, when one replaces the harmonic bath by an anharmonic one in the limit of strong system-bath coupling? Such a picture carries the signature of the probe system in the zeroth order through a nonlocal time kernel. We observe that the two-time noise correlations hold out a rich structure from which the usual FDR emerges only in the leading order of perturbation. Beyond this order, multiple time scales and nontrivial dependence on the temperature starts manifesting. These new aspects conspire to break the time-translational invariance of the noise-correlations. Several other interesting features show up and we discuss them methodically through rigorous calculations order-by-order in perturbation. This formalistic derivation along with a specific example of non-linearity can be easily applied to a huge range of processes and statistical observables that fall under the purview of system-reservoir theory.