Mapping fermion and boson systems onto the Fock space of harmonic oscillators

The fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) is very general and applies to a broad variety of different physical phenomena in condensed matter physics. With the help of the FDT and following the famous work of Caldeira and Leggett, we show that, whenever linear response theory applies, any generic bosonic or fermionic system at finite temperature T can be mapped onto a fictitious system of free-harmonic oscillators. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that such a mapping is explicitly worked out. This finding provides further theoretical support to the phenomenological harmonic oscillator models commonly used in condensed matter. Moreover, our result helps in clarifying an interpretation issue related to the presence and physical origin of the Bose-Einstein factor in the FDT.