  The Caldeira-Leggett Hamiltonian (Eq. (1) below) describes the interaction of
a discrete harmonic oscillator with a continuous bath of harmonic oscillators.
This system is a standard model of dissipation in macroscopic low temperature
physics, and has applications to superconductors, quantum computing, and
macroscopic quantum tunneling. The similarities between the Caldeira-Leggett
model and the linearized Vlasov-Poisson equation are analyzed, and it is shown
that the damping in the Caldeira-Leggett model is analogous to that of Landau
damping in plasmas [1]. An invertible linear transformation [2, 3] is presented
that converts solutions of the Caldeira-Leggett model into solutions of the
linearized Vlasov-Poisson system.
