Generalized Moyal structures in phase space, kinetic equations and their classical limit: II. Applications to harmonic oscillator models

Abstract

The formalism of generalized Wigner transformations developped in a previous paper, is applied to kinetic equations of the Lindblad type for quantum harmonic oscillator models. It is first applied to an oscillator coupled to an equilibrium chain of other oscillators having nearest-neighbour interactions. The kinetic equation is derived without using the so called rotating-wave approximation. Then it is shown that the classical limit of the corresponding phase-space equation is independent of the ordering of operators corresponding to the inverse of the generalized Wigner transformation, provided the latter is involutive. Moreover, this limit equation, which conserves the probabilistic nature of the distribution function and obeys an H-theorem, coincides with the kinetic equation for the corresponding classical system, which is derived independently and is distinct from that usually obtained in the litterature and not sharing the above properties. Finally the same formalism is applied to more general model equations used in quantum optics and it is shown that the above results remain unaltered.