Rings and boxes in dissipative environments

TL;DR

This paper investigates a particle on a ring within a dissipative environment, revealing a fixed point in dissipation and quantized relaxation resistance, with implications for experimental measurement of quantized noise.

Contribution

It demonstrates the flow to a fixed point in dissipation and the quantization of relaxation resistance in a dissipative quantum system.

Findings

Large dissipation flows to a fixed point at 5/20

Relaxation resistance is quantized for large dissipation

Proposes an experiment to measure quantized noise

Abstract

We study a particle on a ring in presence of a dissipative Caldeira-Leggett environment and derive its response to a DC field. We find, through a 2-loop renormalization group analysis, that a large dissipation parameter $\eta$ flows to a fixed point $\eta_R=\eta_c=\hbar/2\pi$. We also reexamine the mapping of this problem to that of the Coulomb box and show that the relaxation resistance, of recent interest, is quantized for large $\eta$. For finite $\eta>\eta_c$ we find that a certain average of the relaxation resistance is quantized. We propose a box experiment to measure a quantized noise.