Decoherence [1] is a kind of non-unitary process and it is a disappearance of quantum interference among different state vectors. Its origin is known as external fluctuations and dissipations [2] (and observations), these are irreversible processes. Decoherence means a ”wave function collapse”. Because when interference vanishes, the system can not go to any other quantum states. It means the system gets classicality. By research of Caldeira-Leggett [3, 4], it was shown that decoherence happens in a main system with heat bath which consisted of a infinite number of harmonic oscillators and which was used as an environment. Although this means that ”temperature” induces decoherence, it is not essence. Because decoherence would arise in a finite system in which it is difficult to define the ”temperature”. In order to define a statistical quantity like temperature, it is said that ergodicity (time average = statistical average) [5] is needed. For ergodicity of a system, chaos seems to be sufficient condition, but it would not be necessary condition. Please imagine a closed system, there three particles are mutually tied with springs which have different angular frequencies respectively. Lagrangean L is as follow. (x1 means position of particle-1, etc.)
Decoherence [1] is a kind of non-unitary process and it is a disappearance of quantum interference among different state vectors. Its origin is known as external fluctuations and dissipations [2] (and observations), these are irreversible processes. Decoherence means a ”wave function collapse”. Because when interference vanishes, the system can not go to any other quantum states. It means the system gets classicality. By research of Caldeira-Leggett [3, 4], it was shown that decoherence happens in a main system with heat bath which consisted of a infinite number of harmonic oscillators and which was used as an environment. Although this means that ”temperature” induces decoherence, it is not essence. Because decoherence would arise in a finite system in which it is difficult to define the ”temperature”. In order to define a statistical quantity like temperature, it is said that ergodicity (time average = statistical average) [5] is needed. For ergodicity of a system, chaos seems to be sufficient condition, but it would not be necessary condition. Please imagine a closed system, there three particles are mutually tied with springs which have different angular frequencies respectively. Lagrangean L is as follow. (x1 means position of particle-1, etc.)
We study a formulation of quantum mechanics in which the central notion is that of a quantum-mechanical history---a sequence of events at a succession of times. The primary aim is to identify sets of ``decoherent'' (or ``consistent'') histories for the system. These are quantum-mechanical histories suffering negligible interference with each other, and, therefore, to which probabilities may be assigned. These histories may be found for a given system using the so-called decoherence functional. When the decoherence functional is exactly diagonal, probabilities may be assigned to the histories, and all probability sum rules are satisfied exactly. We propose a condition for approximate decoherence, and argue that it implies that most probability sum rules will be satisfied to approximately the same degree. We also derive an inequality bounding the size of the off-diagonal terms of the decoherence functional. We calculate the decoherence functional for some simple one-dimensional systems, with a variety of initial states. For these systems, we explore the extent to which decoherence is produced using two different types of coarse graining. The first type of coarse graining involves imprecise specification of the particle's position. The second involves coupling the particle to a thermal bath of harmonic oscillators and ignoring the details of the bath (the Caldeira-Leggett model). We argue that both types of coarse graining are necessary in general. We explicitly exhibit the degree of decoherence as a function of the temperature of the bath, and of the width to within which the particle's position is specified. We study the diagonal elements of the decoherence functional, representing the probabilities for the possible histories of the system. To the extent that the histories decohere, we show that the probability distributions are peaked about the classical histories of the system, with the distribution of their initial positions and momenta given by a smeared version of the Wigner function. We discuss this result in connection with earlier uses of the Wigner function in this context. We find that there is a certain amount of tension between the demands of decoherence and peaking about classical paths.
Quantum decoherence in all its locus of essence, and expression is the loss of coherence or ordering of the phase angles between the components of a system in a quantum superposition. Detrimental ramifications, and pernicious implications of this dephasing leads to classical or probabilistically additive behavior. Quantum decoherence gives the appearance of wave function collapse (the reduction of the physical possibilities into a single possibility as seen by an observer. Here it is to be noted that perception is not the reality and what you see is not what you see ;what you do not see is what you do not see; what you see is what you do not see ;and what you do not see is what you see.)… Thus in all its wide ranging manifestations, it justifies the propositional subsistence and corporeal reality that justifies the framework and intuition of classical physics as an acceptable approximation: decoherence is the mechanism by which the classical limit emerges out of a perceptual field of quantum starting point and it determines the location of the quantum-classical boundary. Decoherence occurs when a system interacts with its environment in a thermodynamically irreversible way. This prevents transitive states, substantive sub states and determinate orientation different elements in the quantum superposition of the system and environment's wavefunction from interfering with each other. Decoherence has been a subject of active research since the 1980s. Decoherence can be viewed as the principal frontier of diurnal dynamics that results in loss of information from a system into the environment (often modeled as a heat bath), since every system is loosely coupled with the energetic state of its surroundings, with particularistic predicational pronouncements. . Viewed in isolation, the system's dynamics are non-unitary (although the combined system plus environment evolves in a unitary fashion). Thus, the dynamics of the system aphorism and anecdote of the system alone are irreversible. As with any coupling, entanglements are generated in its theme and potentialities between the system and environment, which have the effect of sharing quantum information with—or transferring it to—the surroundings. It is a blatant and flagrant misconception that collapse of wave function is attributable and ascribable to wave function collapse; Decoherence does not generate actual wave function collapse. It only provides an explanation for the appearance of the wavefunction collapse, as the quantum nature of the system leaks into the environment. So, the wave function collapse is the figment of the observer’s imagination, product of puerile prognostication and resultant orientationality of his phantasmagoria. One cannot have the apodictic knowledge of reality that is; components of the wavefunction are decoupled from a coherent system, and acquire phases from their immediate surroundings. A total superposition of the global or universal wavefunction still exists (and remains coherent at the global level), but its ultimate fate remains an interpretational issue. This is a very important pharisaical provenience and plagenetious precocity with all the disembodied resemblances of the system in total form; specifically, decoherence does not attempt to explain the measurement problem. Rather, decoherence provides an explanation for the transition of the system to a mixture of states that seem to correspond to those states observers perceive. Moreover, our observation tells us that this mixture looks like a proper quantum ensemble in a measurement situation, as we observe that measurements lead to the of precisely one state in the ensemble.Decoherence represents a challenge for the practical realization of quantum computers, since they are expected to rely heavily on the undisturbed evolution of quantum coherences. Simply put; they require that coherent states be preserved and that decoherence is managed, in order to actually perform quantum computation. In the following we give a model for decoherence of the environment, coupled quantum states, at determinate and differential levels ,internal resonance in coupled spin systems, and the conflict in the Quantum state operations and decoupling. KEY WORDS Coupled quantum states, Quantum mechanics
The study of the quantum–classical correspondence has been focused on the quantum measurement problem. However, most of the discussion in the preceding chapters is motivated by a broader question: Why do we perceive our quantum Universe as classical? Therefore, emergence of the classical phase space and Newtonian dynamics from the quantum Hilbert space must be addressed. Chapter 6 starts by re-deriving decoherence rate for non-local superpositions using the Wigner representation of quantum states. We then discuss the circumstances that, in some situations, make classical points a useful idealization of the quantum states of many-body systems. This classical structure of phase space emerges along with the (at least approximately reversible) Newtonian equations of motion. Approximate reversibility is a non-trivial desideratum given that the quantum evolution of the corresponding open system is typically irreversible. We show when such approximately reversible evolution is possible. We also discuss quantum counterparts of classically chaotic systems and show that, as a consequence of decoherence, their evolution tends to be fundamentally irreversible: They produce entropy at the rate determined by the Lyapunov exponents that characterize classical chaos. Thus, quantum decoherence provides a rigorous rationale for the approximations that led to Boltzmann’s H-theorem.
We calculate the reduced density matrix for a system of coupled harmonic oscillators in a bosonic heat bath using the Born-Markov approximation and show that the expectation values of position and momentum evolve like classical quantities. We consider the cases where every oscillator is coupled to its own reservoir and where all oscillators are coupled to the same heat bath, pointing out the differences between these two models. In particular, for systems coupled to a common reservoir, we present an uncommon dissipation mechanism, which disappears, when the dynamics of the system are gouverned by the low frequency modes of the environment (Caldeira-Leggett limit). We also address the interesting phenomenon of reservoir-induced interactions.
In this work the decoherence formalism of quantum mechanics is explored and applied to a number of interesting problems in quantum physics. The boundary between quantum and classical physics is examined, and demonstration made that quantum histories corresponding to classical equations of motion become more probable for a broad class of models, including linear and nonlinear models of Brownian motion. The link between noise, dissipation, and decoherence is studied. This work is then applied to systems which classically exhibit dissipative chaotic dynamics. A theory is explicated for treating these systems, and the ideas are applied to a particular model of the forced, damped Duffing oscillator, which is chaotic for certain parameter values. Differences between classical and quantum chaos are examined, particularly differences arising in the structure of fractal strange attractors, and the conceptual difficulties in framing standard notions of chaos in a quantum system. A brief discussion of previous work on quantum chaos is included, and the differences between Hamiltonian and dissipative chaos pointed out; a somewhat different interpretation of quantum chaos from the standard one is suggested. A class of histories for quantum systems, in phase space rather than configuration space, is studied. Different ways of representing projections in phase space are discussed, and expressions for the probability of phase space histories are derived; conditions for such histories to decohere are also estimated in the semiclassical limit.
Abstract This thesis has two parts, in the first, the Caldeira-Leggett model is introduced; its derivation and general consequences are explored following a paper by Caldeira and Leggett[1]. An operator-formalism shortcut through some of the more mathematically cumbersome parts of the derivation of the model is also developed. The correlation of the force resulting from reservoir-interaction is examined in the high- and low-temperature limits, and the Langevin equation is shown to emerge in the classical limit.Abstract The second part introduces decoherence through a thought experiment that demonstrates the destructive effect of random phase shifts on interference terms, and then follows another paper by Caldeira and Leggett[2] in applying their model further to study the phenomenon of dissipative decoherence. The time-evolution of the interference terms in a superposition of Gaussian wave packets in a harmonic oscillator potential is studied when interacting with a heat bath, and they are shown to vanish at a rate much faster than the relaxation of the system.