Nonergodic Brownian oscillator: High-frequency response

Abstract

We consider a Brownian oscillator whose coupling to the environment may lead to the formation of a localized normal mode. For lower values of the oscillator's natural frequency, $\omega\le\omega_c$, the localized mode is absent and the unperturbed oscillator reaches thermal equilibrium. For higher values of $\omega>\omega_c$, when the localized mode is formed, the unperturbed oscillator does not thermalize but rather evolves into a nonequilibrium cyclostationary state. We consider the response of such an oscillator to an external periodic force. Despite the coupling to the environment, the oscillator shows the unbounded resonance (with the response linearly increasing with time) when the frequency of the external force coincides with the frequency of the localized mode. An unusual resonance (``quasi-resonance") occurs for the oscillator with the critical value of the natural frequency $\omega=\omega_c$, which separates thermalizing (ergodic) and non-thermalizing (nonergodic) configurations. In that case the resonance response increases with time sublinearly, which can be interpreted as a resonance between the external force and the incipient localized mode.