Toward irreversibility with a finite bath of oscillators

Abstract

We investigate the routes by which a bath composed of a finite number of oscillators at zero temperature approaches the induction of dissipation when it nears the usual limit of dense spectrum spread in an infinite interval. It is shown that, when this limit is taken, different distributions of environment frequencies can lead to the same irreversible evolution. However, when we move away from it, the dynamics departs from irreversibility in qualitatively different manners.