Dynamical Localization and Decoherence

Quanlin Jie, Bambi Hu, Guangjong Dong

We investigate numerically the tunneling effect under influence of another particle in a double well system. Such influence from only one degree of freedom makes decoherence and quantum-classical transition, i.e., suppression of the tunneling effect. The decoherence happens even for cases that the influence is from a particle of very small mass, and it has virtually no effect in the corresponding classical dynamics. There are cases similar to dynamical localization that the suppressed tunneling rate is several times smaller than the classical counterpart. This result is relevant for understanding quantitatively the dynamical process of decoherence and quantum to classical transition.

Andreas Zoupas

Henning Schomerus, Eric Lutz

We investigate decoherence in the quantum kicked rotator (modeling cold atoms in a pulsed optical field) subjected to noise with power-law tail waiting-time distributions of variable exponent (Lévy noise). We demonstrate the existence of a regime of nonexponential decoherence where the notion of a decoherence rate is ill defined. In this regime, dynamical localization is never fully destroyed, indicating that the dynamics of the quantum system never reaches the classical limit. We show that this leads to quantum subdiffusion of the momentum, which should be observable in an experiment.

Stanislav Filatov, Marcis P. Auzinsh

Quantum decoherence is crucial to understanding the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum reality. Decoherence dynamics are unitary, although they superselect a preferred eigenbasis. Decoherence dynamics result in stable macroscopic, localized, classical-like states. We show that the above-mentioned facts imply the possibility of the existence of decoherence-like dynamics that result in stable macroscopic non-localized non-classical-like states. Being rooted in the fabric of the decoherence theory itself, this property implies environments that steer the decoherence towards, for example, spatial superpositions of macroscopic objects. To demonstrate this, we provide thought-experimental, mathematical and philosophical arguments.

D. Dubbers, H.‐J. Stöckmann