Energy Exchange in Driven Open Quantum Systems at Strong Coupling

The time-dependent energy transfer in a driven quantum system strongly coupled to a heat bath is studied within an influence functional approach. Exact formal expressions for the statistics of energy dissipation into the different channels are derived. The general method is applied to the driven dissipative two-state system. It is shown that the energy flows obey a balance relation, and that, for strong coupling, the interaction may constitute the major dissipative channel. Results in analytic form are presented for the particular value K=12 of strong Ohmic dissipation. The energy flows show interesting behaviors including driving-induced coherences and quantum stochastic resonances. It is found that the general characteristics persists for K near 12.