We consider a system of N identical quantum particles coupled to an environment. The coupling is scaled in a mean-field way, and particles interact indirectly through the environment. There is no direct interaction between particles. The time evolution of the mean-field-scaled particles is called the mean-field dynamics and the limit of the evolution as N → ∞ is called the mean-field limit. The study of mean-field limits is an active topic of research in many-body quantum theory. Previously, almost all research in this area has been carried out for directly interacting particles without interaction with an environment. In this thesis, we prove that under a suitable condition on the initial system states the mean-field limit in the above indirectly interacting particle system does exist. The condition is satisfied in particular for spin ½ (qubit) systems. Assuming this condition, we show that the system dynamics is the free dynamics in the mean-field limit N → ∞, and we find the first and second correction terms. We show that the particles have a collective effect on the dynamics of the environment (reservoir) which we derive analytically. We give examples to illustrate our results.
I argue that conventional estimates of the criterion for classical behavior of a macroscopic body are incorrect in most circumstances,because they do not take into account the locality of interactions, which characterizes the behavior of all systems described approximately by local quantum field theory. The deviations from classical behavior of a macroscopic body, except for those that can be described as classical uncertainties in the initial values of macroscopic variables,are {\it exponentially} small as a function of the volume of the macro-system in microscopic units. Conventional estimates are correct only when the internal degrees of freedom of the macrosystem are in their ground state, and the classical motion of collective coordinates is adiabatic. Otherwise, the system acts as its own environment and washes out quantum phase correlations between different classical states of its collective coordinates. I suggest that it is likely that we can only achieve meso-scopic superpositions, for systems which have topological variables, and for which we can couple to those variables without exciting phonons.
Abstract In current research we investigate macroscopic collective quantum effects in interacting electron gas with arbitrary degree of degeneracy due to electrostatic field-density coupling. It is found that in the one dimensional excitation model deterministic quantum charge transport can take place due to the electrostatic field coupling of the interacting electron correlations with number density variations of the electron gas. A new expression for probability current is found to be valid for collective excitations in interacting electron gas. It is also revealed that the phase-space evolution of modified Wigner distribution function for linear quasiparticle excitations resembles that of the classical free particle. In other words, semiclassical linear evolution of collective excitations in interacting quantum electron gas is quite analogous to dynamics of classical system of particles in the absence of external forces, where the interparticle electrostatic forces play the analogous role of internal classical forces. It is shown that the electrostatic field of electrons when coupled to collective electron wavefunction can also lead to directly measurable macroscopic phenomena. It is remarked that the interacting system of electrons simultaneously exhibits microscopic and macroscopic effects that are linked through the dual lengthscale behavior of collective quantum electron excitations.
Ever since the advent of quantum mechanics, it has been clear that the atoms composing matter do not obey Newton's laws. Instead, their behavior is described by the Schroedinger equation. Surprisingly though, until recently, no clear explanation was given for why everyday objects, which are merely collections of atoms, are observed to obey Newton's laws. It would seem that, if quantum mechanics explains all the properties of atoms accurately, they, too, should obey quantum mechanics. This reasoning led some scientists to believe in a distinct macroscopic, or ``big and complicated,'' world in which quantum mechanics fails and classical mechanics takes over, although there has never been experimental evidence for such a failure. Even those who insisted that Newtonian mechanics would somehow emerge from the underlying quantum mechanics as the system became increasingly macroscopic were hindered by the lack of adequate experimental and theoretical tools. In the last decade, however, this quantum-to-classical transition has become accessible to experimental study and quantitative description, and the resulting insights are the subject of this article.
We study the dynamics of a bipartite quantum system in a way such that its formal description keeps holding even if one of its parts becomes macroscopic; the problem is related to the analysis of the quantum-to-classical crossover, but our approach implies that the whole system stays genuinely quantum. The aim of the work is to understand (1) if, (2) to what extent, and possibly (3) how the evolution of a macroscopic environment testifies to the coupling with its microscopic quantum companion. To this purpose we consider a magnetic environment made of a large number of spin-
21 particles, coupled with a quantum mechanical oscillator, possibly in the presence of an external magnetic field. We take the value of the total environmental spin
S constant and large, which allows us to consider the environment as one single macroscopic system, and further deal with the hurdles of the spin-algebra via approximations that are valid in the large-
S limit. We find an insightful expression for the propagator of the whole system, where we identify an effective ``back-action'' term, i.e., an operator acting on the magnetic environment only, and yet missing in the absence of the quantum principal system. This operator emerges as a time-dependent magnetic anisotropy whose character, whether uniaxial or planar, also depends on the detuning between the frequency of the oscillator and the level splitting in the spectrum of the free magnetic system, induced by the possible presence of the external field. The time dependence of the anisotropy is analyzed, and its effects on the dynamics of the magnet, as well as its relation to the entangling evolution of the overall system, are discussed.