Time, chaos and the quantum towards the resolution of the time paradox

Ching-Yi Chiu, E. C. G. Sudarshan, Baidyanath Misra

Henry Mehlberg, Robert S. Cohen

Guanglei Wang, Ying-Cheng Lai, Celso Grebogi

Recently, the phenomenon of quantum-classical correspondence breakdown was uncovered in optomechanics, where in the classical regime the system exhibits chaos but in the corresponding quantum regime the motion is regular - there appears to be no signature of classical chaos whatsoever in the corresponding quantum system, generating a paradox. We find that transient chaos, besides being a physically meaningful phenomenon by itself, provides a resolution. Using the method of quantum state diffusion to simulate the system dynamics subject to continuous homodyne detection, we uncover transient chaos associated with quantum trajectories. The transient behavior is consistent with chaos in the classical limit, while the long term evolution of the quantum system is regular. Transient chaos thus serves as a bridge for the quantum-classical transition (QCT). Strikingly, as the system transitions from the quantum to the classical regime, the average chaotic transient lifetime increases dramatically (faster than the Ehrenfest time characterizing the QCT for isolated quantum systems). We develop a physical theory to explain the scaling law.

Henry Mehlberg

Nobuhiko Saitô

Quantum non-integrable systems have pseudochaos in the phase of the eigenfunctions. In particular, correlation function of wave functions at two different points disappears, when observation process, which requires space and/or time average over a small range, is taken into account. This gives rise to the realization of decoherence in measuring processes. By virtue of this property of quantum chaos, various problems and paradoxes are explained in the framework of conventional quantum mechanics. The subjects treated here are the duality of wave and particle, the wave function collapse in measurement, Stern–Gerlach experiments, Schrödinger's cat paradox, the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox and quantum Zeno effect.

Michael B. Heaney

The Einstein’s Boxes paradox was developed by Einstein, de Broglie, Heisenberg, and others to demonstrate the incompleteness of the Copenhagen Formulation of quantum mechanics. I explain the paradox using the Copenhagen Formulation. I then show how a Time-Symmetric Formulation of quantum mechanics resolves the paradox in the way envisioned by Einstein and de Broglie. Finally, I describe an experiment that can distinguish between these two formulations.