A quantum oscillator interacting with a classical oscillator

arXiv:2403.07479v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study a quantum oscillator interacting with, and back-reacting on, a classical oscillator. This can be done consistently provided the quantum system decoheres, while the backreaction has a stochastic component which causes the classical system to undergo diffusion. Nonetheless, the state of the quantum oscillator can remain pure conditioned on the trajectory of the classical oscillator. We solve the system using the classical-quantum path integral formulation, and compute the free and bridge correlators of the theory, which we use to find the heating rate. In addition, we explicitly compute the conditioned, and unconditional purity of the system. This serves as a toy model for a number of other systems in which one subsystem can be treated as effectively classical, such as a scalar quantum field interacting with another field undergoing decoherence, or a system emitting radiation, one of which is treated classically.