Dissipative forces play an important role in problems of classical as well as quantum mechanics. Since these forces are not among the basic forces of nature, it is essential to consider whether they should be treated as phenomenological interactions used in the equations of motion, or they should be derived from other conservative forces. In this book we discuss both approaches in detail starting with the Stoke's law of motion in a viscous fluid and ending with a rather detailed review of the recent attempts to understand the nature of the drag forces originating from the motion of a plane or a sphere in vacuum caused by the variations in the zero-point energy. In the classical formulation, mathematical techniques for construction of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian for the variational formulation of non-conservative systems are discussed at length. Various physical systems of interest including the problem of radiating electron, theory of natural line width, spin-boson problem, scattering and trapping of heavy ions and optical potential models of nuclear reactions are considered and solved.
This book discusses issues associated with the quantum mechanical formulation of dissipative systems. It begins with an introductory review of phenomenological damping forces, and the construction of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian for the damped motion. It is shown, in addition to these methods, that classical dissipative forces can also be derived from solvable many-body problems. A detailed discussion of these derived forces and their dependence on dynamical variables is also presented. The second part of this book investigates the use of classical formulation in the quantization of dynamical systems under the influence of dissipative forces. The results show that, while a satisfactory solution to the problem cannot be found, different formulations represent different approximations to the complete solution of two interacting systems. The third and final part of the book focuses on the problem of dissipation in interacting quantum mechanical systems, as well as the connection of some of these models to their classical counterparts. A number of important applications, such as the theory of heavy-ion scattering and the motion of a radiating electron, are also discussed.
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