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Obstructions to mixing classical and quantum dynamics

José Caro, L. L. Salcedo

Published Dec 17, 1998• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

The dynamics of systems composed of a classical sector plus a quantum sector is studied. We show that, even in the simplest cases, (i) the existence of a consistent canonical description for such mixed systems is incompatible with very basic requirements related to the time evolution of the two sectors when they are decoupled. (ii) The classical sector cannot inherit quantum fluctuations from the quantum sector. And, (iii) a coupling among the two sectors is incompatible with the requirement of physical positivity of the theory, i.e., there would be positive observables with a non positive expectation value. PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz, 03.65.Sq, 03.65.Fd Typeset using REVTEXI. INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSIONS Ever since the beginnings of quantum mechanics, physical systems have been considered which are composed of a quantum mechanical sector plus another sector described in classical terms [1]. For instance, this issue is central in the quantum theory of the measurement when the apparatus is treated classically. The same situation appears also at a less fundamental

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The dynamics of systems composed of a classical sector plus a quantum sector is studied. We show that, even in the simplest cases, (i) the existence of a consistent canonical description for such mixed systems is incompatible with very basic requirements related to the time evolution of the two sectors when they are decoupled. (ii) The classical sector cannot inherit quantum fluctuations from the quantum sector. And, (iii) a coupling among the two sectors is incompatible with the requirement of physical positivity of the theory, i.e., there would be positive observables with a non positive expectation value. PACS numbers: 03.65.Bz, 03.65.Sq, 03.65.Fd Typeset using REVTEXI. INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSIONS Ever since the beginnings of quantum mechanics, physical systems have been considered which are composed of a quantum mechanical sector plus another sector described in classical terms [1]. For instance, this issue is central in the quantum theory of the measurement when the apparatus is treated classically. The same situation appears also at a less fundamental
The dynamics of systems composed of a classical sector plus a quantum sector is studied. We show that, even in the simplest cases, (i) the existence of a consistent canonical description for such mixed systems is incompatible with very basic requirements related to the time evolution of the two sectors when they are decoupled, (ii) the classical sector cannot inherit quantum fluctuations from the quantum sector, and (iii) a coupling among the two sectors is incompatible with the requirement of physical positivity of the theory, i.e., there would be positive observables with a nonpositive expectation value.
A recent proposal for mixed dynamics of classical and quantum ensembles is shown, in contrast to other proposals, to satisfy the minimal algebraic requirements proposed by Salcedo for any consistent formulation of such dynamics. Generalized Ehrenfest relations for the expectation values of classical and quantum observables are also obtained. It is further shown that additional desirable requirements, related to separability, may be satisfied under the assumption that only the configuration of the classical component is directly accessible to measurement, e.g., via a classical pointer. Although the mixed dynamics is formulated in terms of ensembles on configuration space, thermodynamic mixtures of such ensembles may be defined which are equivalent to canonical phase-space ensembles on the classical sector. Hence, the formulation appears to be both consistent and physically complete.
Quantum mechanics is not logically closed with respect to the classical world.Its formalism unfolds as the quantization of a sub-set of classical Hamiltonians.The interpretation of quantum theory in terms of the measurement process inevitably requires to deal with systems composed by a mixture of both classical and quantum degrees of freedom.Moreover, when energy can flow between the quantum and classical degrees of freedom (i.e., in the case of nonadiabatic dynamics), there are more theoretical difficulties in order to obtain a fully consistent quantum-classical formalism.In order to perform calculations, one can renounce to the usual Lie algebraic structure of well-established physical theories, adopt non-Hamiltonian brackets, and obtain a formalism for the dynamics and statistics of quantum-classical systems that has an affordable computational complexity.Recent progress in the algorithms for the sampling of nonadiabatic dynamics of quantum-classical systems at long time is reviewed here.
A general dynamical system composed of two coupled sectors is considered. The initial-time configuration of one of these sectors is described by a set of classical data while the other is described by standard quantum data. These dynamical systems will be named half quantum and the aim of this paper is to derive their dynamical evolution. The standard approach would be to use quantum mechanics to make predictions for the time evolution of the half quantum initial data. The main problem is how quantum mechanics can be applied to a dynamical system whose initial time configuration is not described by a set of fully quantum data. A solution to this problem is presented and used as a guideline to obtain a general formulation of coupled classical-quantum dynamics. Finally, a quantization prescription mapping a given classical theory to the corresponding half quantum one is presented.
We study the back-reaction of quantum systems onto classical ones. Taking the starting point that semi-classical physics should be described at all times by a point in classical phase space and a quantum state in Hilbert space, we consider an unravelling approach, describing the system in terms of a classical-quantum trajectory. We derive the general form of the dynamics under the assumptions that the classical trajectories are continuous and the evolution is autonomous, and the requirement that the dynamics is linear and completely positive in the combined classical-quantum state. This requirement is necessary in order to consistently describe probabilities, and forces the dynamics to be stochastic when the back-reaction is non-zero. The resulting equations of motion are natural generalisations of the standard semi-classical equations of motion, but since the resulting dynamics is linear in the combined classical-quantum state, it does not lead to the pathologies which usually follow from evolution laws based on expectation values. In particular, the evolution laws we present account for correlations between the classical and quantum system, which resolves issues associated with other semi-classical approaches. In addition, despite a breakdown of predictability in the classical degrees of freedom, the quantum state evolves deterministically conditioned on the classical trajectory, provided a trade-off between decoherence and diffusion is saturated. As a result, the quantum state remains pure when conditioned on the classical trajectory. To illustrate these points, we numerically simulate a number of semi-classical toy models, including one of vacuum fluctuations as a source driving the expansion of the universe. Finally, we discuss the application of these results to semi-classical gravity, and the black-hole information problem.