Reply to ‘‘Comment on ‘Energy balance for a dissipative system’ ’’

In a Comment by I. R. Senitzky [Phys. Rev. E 51, 5166 (1995)] on a recent paper by Li et al. [Phys. Rev. E 48, 1547 (1993)] dealing with energy balance for an oscillator coupled with a heat bath, it is claimed that the formula given there for the power supplied to the oscillator by the bath, while formally correct, is misleading, since it does not vanish at absolute zero. In reply, it is pointed out that different parts of the physical system, which is the oscillator plus the bath plus their coupling, can and do exchange energy, even at absolute zero.