System-reservoir theory with anharmonic baths: a perturbative approach

TL;DR

This paper develops a perturbative classical approach to analyze a system coupled with a nonlinear oscillator reservoir, revealing modifications to the fluctuation-dissipation relation and noise characteristics due to anharmonicity.

Contribution

It extends the standard system-reservoir theory to nonlinear baths using perturbation theory, highlighting how nonlinearity alters fluctuation-dissipation relations.

Findings

Fluctuation-dissipation relation is modified by nonlinearity.

Higher powers of kBT appear in noise correlation expressions.

Non-zero first moment of noise can occur without external drive.

Abstract

In this paper we present a study of a general system coupled to a reservoir consisting of nonlinear oscillators, based on perturbation theory at the classical level. We extend the standard Zwanzig approach of elimination of bath degrees of freedom order by order in perturbation. We observe that the Fluctuation Dissipation Relation (FDR) in its standard form for harmonic baths gets modified due to the nonlinearity and this is manifested through higher powers of kBT in the expression for two-time noise correlation.As an aside, we also observe that the first moment of the noise arising from a nonlinear bath can be non-zero, even in absence of any external drive, if the reservoir potential is asymmetric with respect to one of its minima, about which one builds up the perturbation theory.