ALBERT

Description:    We consider the physical model of a classical mechanical system (called “small system”) undergoing repeated interactions with a chain of identical small pieces (called “environment”). This physical setup constitutes an advantageous way of implementing dissipation for classical systems; it is at the same time Hamiltonian and Markovian. This kind of model has already been studied in the context of quantum mechanical systems, where it was shown to give rise to quantum Langevin equations in the limit of continuous time interactions (Attal and Pautrat in Ann Henri Poincaré 7:59–104, 2006 ), but it has never been considered for classical mechanical systems yet. The aim of this article is to compute the continuous limit of repeated interactions for classical systems and to prove that they give rise to particular stochastic differential equations (SDEs) in the limit. In particular, we recover the usual Langevin equations associated with the action of heat baths. In order to obtain these results, we consider the discrete-time dynamical system induced by Hamilton’s equations and the repeated interactions. We embed it into a continuous-time dynamical system and compute the limit when the time step goes to 0. This way, we obtain a discrete-time approximation of SDE, considered as a deterministic dynamical system on the Wiener space, which is not exactly of the usual Euler scheme type. We prove the L p and almost sure convergence of this scheme. We end up with applications to concrete physical examples such as a charged particle in a uniform electric field or a harmonic interaction. We obtain the usual Langevin equation for the action of a heat bath when considering a damped harmonic oscillator as the small system. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-42 DOI 10.1007/s00023-012-0179-7 Authors Julien Deschamps, C.N.R.S., Institut Camille Jordan, Université de Lyon, Université de Lyon 1, 21, av Claude Bernard, 69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France Journal Annales Henri Poincare Online ISSN 1424-0661 Print ISSN 1424-0637