Decoherence: From Interpretation to Experiment

J. M. Raimond, M. Brune, S. Haroche

We describe the blueprint of an experiment in which the decoherence of a mesoscopic superposition of radiation states (``Schr\"odinger cat'') becomes a reversible process. When the high $Q$ cavity containing the Schr\"odinger cat is coupled to another resonator, the mesoscopic quantum coherence first decays rapidly, then exhibits sharp revivals with the period of the energy exchange between the two cavities. The interpretation of this experiment emphasizes the link between decoherence and complementarity and leads to an illuminating quantitative interpretation of the usual irreversible decoherence phenomenon.

Philippe Blanchard, Erich Joos, Domenico Giulini +2 more

J. M. Raimond

Верхозин Анатолий Николаевич

The article addresses the unique experiment carried out by Austrian physicists in 2004 — a regulated decoherence of macromolecules. The author presents the interpretation of the experiment according to which decoherence is caused by the information exchange between subsystems — a fullerene molecule and the environment.

Yoshiaki Ohkuwa

We confirm that the diagonal elements of the Gell-Mann-Hartle decoherence functional are equal to the relative frequencies of the results of many identical experiments, when a set of alternative histories decoheres. We consider both cases of the pure and mixed initial states.