Quantum theory of the damped harmonic oscillator

A phenomenological stochastic modelling of the process of thermal and quantal fluctuations of a damped harmonic oscillator is presented. The divergence of the momentum dispersion associated with the Markovian limit is removed by a Drude regularization. The variances of position and momentum are evaluated in closed form at arbitrary temperature and for arbitrary damping. Properties of real and imaginary time correlation functions are discussed, and a spectral decomposition of the equilibrium density matrix is given.