Nose-Hoover dynamics for coherent states

Abstract

The popular method of Nose and Hoover to create canonically distributed positions and momenta in classical molecular dynamics simulations is generalized to a genuine quantum system of infinite dimensionality. We show that for the quantum harmonic oscillator, the equations of motion in terms of coherent states can easily be modified in an analogous manner to mimic the coupling of the system to a thermal bath and create a quantum canonical ensemble. Possible applications to more complex systems, especially interacting Fermion systems, are proposed.