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Physical Review A

Quantum coherence and interference of damped free particles

Craig M. Savage, Daniel F. Walls

Published Dec 1, 1985• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We use a Markovian master equation to solve for the dynamics of a free particle damped by the coupling of its coordinate to a bath of harmonic oscillators. In the coordinate basis the reduced density matrix for the free particle tends to be diagonalized. Considering the evolution of an initial superposition of two plane waves, we find that the interference-pattern fringe contrast is decreased by the damping. However, for fixed times and sufficiently large damping, the fringe contrast increases with increasing damping. Considering an initial coordinate-space Gaussian wave function, we find that for sufficiently large damping the coupling to the environment models a quantum measurement of the particle's coordinate.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.32.3487

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We use a Markovian master equation to solve for the dynamics of a free particle damped by the coupling of its coordinate to a bath of harmonic oscillators. In the coordinate basis the reduced density matrix for the free particle tends to be diagonalized. Considering the evolution of an initial superposition of two plane waves, we find that the interference-pattern fringe contrast is decreased by the damping. However, for fixed times and sufficiently large damping, the fringe contrast increases with increasing damping. Considering an initial coordinate-space Gaussian wave function, we find that for sufficiently large damping the coupling to the environment models a quantum measurement of the particle's coordinate.
We solve the master equation for the coordinate-coordinate damped harmonic oscillator for initial superpositions of coherent states. In the zero-temperature case the solution remains a simple superposition of coherent states. While the underdamped oscillator evolves all initial superpositions into mixtures of coherent states the overdamped oscillator does so selectively. For finite temperatures coherent states are no longer preserved, and we find a decrease in the variance of the off-diagonal coordinate-basis density-matrix elements below the coherent-state value. This variance decreases with increasing bath temperature. In the overdamped case there is negligible associated spreading of the diagonal coordinate-basis density-matrix elements. Thus the coordinate basis is an example of Zurek's pointer basis and the coordinate damped oscillator models the coordinate-basis density-matrix diagonalization which occurs in a coordinate measurement.
Some aspects of quantum damped harmonic oscillator (DHO) obeying a Markovian master equation are considered in the absence of thermal noise. The continuity equation is derived and Bohmian trajectories are constructed. As a solution of the master equation, we take a single coherent state and compute analytically the relative entropy of coherence, [Formula: see text], in the energy, position and momentum bases. Although [Formula: see text] is constant in both the position and the momentum bases, it is a decreasing function of time in the energy basis becoming zero at long times, revealing its role as the preferred basis. Then, quantum coherence is computed for a superposition of two coherent states, a cat state, and also a superposition of two cat states in the energy basis as a function of separation, in the complex plane, between the two superposed states. It is seen that the quantum coherence increases with this separation. Furthermore, quantum coherence of superposition is compared to that of decomposed states in the superposition. Finally, by considering a system of two noninteracting DHOs, the effect of quantum statistics is studied on the coherence of reduced single-particle states, the joint detection probability and the mean square separation of particles. Our computations show that the single-particle coherence for antisymmetric states is always less than that of symmetric ones. Furthermore, boson anti-bunching and fermion bunching is seen in this open system. This behavior of bosons is the matter-wave analogue of photon anti-bunching seen in a modified Hanbury Brown–Twiss (HBT) interferometer.
To examine the loss of entanglement in a two-particle Gaussian system, we couple it to an environment and use the Non-Rotating Wave master equation to study the system's dynamics. We also present a derivation of this equation. We consider two different types of evolution. Under free evolution we find that entanglement is lost quickly between the particles. When a harmonic potential is added between the particles, two very different behaviours can be observed, namely in the over and under-damped cases respectively, where the strength of the damping is determined by how large the coupling to the bath is with respect to the frequency of the potential. In the over-damped case, we find that the entanglement vanishes at even shorter times than it does in the free evolution. In the (very) under-damped case, we observe that the entanglement does not vanish. Instead it oscillates towards a stable value.
The quantum theory of a damped harmonic oscillator is developed by considering an exactly solvable model, previously discussed by Unruh and Zurek [Phys. Rev. D 40, 1071 (1989)]. A one-dimensional harmonic oscillator is coupled to a scalar field. The field is assumed to be initially in thermal equilibrium. The Heisenberg equations of motion are solved without approximation, and the first and second moments, 〈q(t)〉, 〈p(t)〉, 〈q2{\mathit{q}}^{2}q2(t)〉, 〈p2{\mathit{p}}^{2}p2(t)〉, and 〈q(t)p(t)+p(t)q(t)〉 of the coordinate and momentum of the oscillator are calculated. The high-temperature, zero-temperature, free-particle, and weak-damping limits are discussed. A Wigner function of Gaussian form is constructed. The density-matrix equation derived by Louisell $[---Quantum Statistical Properties of Radiation (Wiley, New York, 1973)] is examined and shown to have a solution in agreement with our weak-damping limit.