Dissipative dynamics of a heavy impurity in a Bose gas in the strong coupling regime

Abstract

We study the motion of a heavy impurity in a one-dimensional Bose gas. The impurity experiences the friction force due to scattering off thermally excited quasiparticles. We present detailed analysis of an arbitrarily strong impurity-boson coupling in a wide range of temperatures within a microscopic theory. Focusing mostly on weakly interacting bosons, we derive an analytical result for the friction force and uncover new regimes of the impurity dynamics. Particularly interesting is the low-temperature $T^2$ dependence of the friction force obtained for a strongly coupled impurity, which should be contrasted with the expected $T^4$ scaling. This new regime applies to systems of bosons with an arbitrary repulsion strength. We finally study the evolution of the impurity with a given initial momentum. We evaluate analytically its non-stationary momentum distribution function. The impurity relaxation towards the equilibrium is a realization of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process in momentum space.