Anomalous diffusion of a quantum Brownian particle in a one-dimensional molecular chain

We discuss anomalous relaxation processes of a quantum Brownian particle which interacts with an acoustic phonon field as a thermal reservoir in one-dimensional chain molecule. We derive a kinetic equation for the particle using the complex spectral representation of the Liouville-von Neumann operator. Due to the one-dimensionality, the momentum space separates into infinite sets of disjoint irreducible subspaces dynamically independent of one another. Hence, momentum relaxation occurs only within each subspace toward the Maxwell distribution. We obtain a hydrodynamic mode with transport coefficients, a sound velocity, and a diffusion coefficient, defined in each subspace. Moreover, because the sound velocity has momentum dependence, phase mixing affects the broadening of the spatial distribution of the particle in addition to the diffusion process. Due to the phase mixing, the increase rate of the mean-square displacement of the particle increases linearly with time and diverges in the long-time limit.