Effective dynamics of a tracer particle interacting with an ideal Bose gas

We study a system consisting of a heavy quantum particle, called the tracer particle, coupled to an ideal gas of light Bose particles, the ratio of masses of the tracer particle and a gas particle being proportional to the gas density. All particles have non-relativistic kinematics. The tracer particle is driven by an external potential and couples to the gas particles through a pair potential. We compare the quantum dynamics of this system to an effective dynamics given by a Newtonian equation of motion for the tracer particle coupled to a classical wave equation for the Bose gas. We quantify the closeness of these two dynamics as the mean-field limit is approached (gas density →∞). Our estimates allow us to interchange the thermodynamic with the mean-field limit