Currents and fluctuations of quantum heat transport in harmonic chains

Abstract

Abstract Heat transport in open quantum systems is particularly susceptible to the modeling of system–reservoir interactions. It thus requires us to consistently treat the coupling between a quantum system and its environment. While perturbative approaches are successfully used in fields like quantum optics and quantum information, they reveal deficiencies—typically in the context of thermodynamics, when it is essential to respect additional criteria such as fluctuation-dissipation theorems. We use a non-perturbative approach for quantum dissipative dynamics based on a stochastic Liouville–von Neumann equation to provide a very general and extremely efficient formalism for heat currents and their correlations in open harmonic chains. Specific results are derived not only for first- but also for second-order moments, which requires us to account for both real and imaginary parts of bath–bath correlation functions. Spatiotemporal patterns are compared with weak coupling calculations. The regime of stronger system–reservoir couplings gives rise to an intimate interplay between reservoir fluctuations and heat transfer far from equilibrium.