Henry is in peril after bailing out from a burning airplane, because his quantum suit has uncontrollably split him into four quantum versions, only one of which can get hold of the parachute. In order to survive, all his versions must recombine via interference exactly where the parachute is. To this end, the phases of all his versions must be fully in control. Alas, Henry’s ejection has scrambled (randomized) his phases by decoherence (dephasing), which is common in quantum systems. A tip from Eve in mid-air concerning phase reversal proves to be a life saver! This decoherence control, which is indispensable in MRI, is termed sin echo, as the dynamics after the phase reversal echoes the dynamics before this operation. The much further-reaching potential goal of decoherence control may be to influence metabolism and even the process of dying. The appendix to this chapter explains dephasing and its control by the spin-echo method.
Henry is in peril after bailing out from a burning airplane, because his quantum suit has uncontrollably split him into four quantum versions, only one of which can get hold of the parachute. In order to survive, all his versions must recombine via interference exactly where the parachute is. To this end, the phases of all his versions must be fully in control. Alas, Henry’s ejection has scrambled (randomized) his phases by decoherence (dephasing), which is common in quantum systems. A tip from Eve in mid-air concerning phase reversal proves to be a life saver! This decoherence control, which is indispensable in MRI, is termed sin echo, as the dynamics after the phase reversal echoes the dynamics before this operation. The much further-reaching potential goal of decoherence control may be to influence metabolism and even the process of dying. The appendix to this chapter explains dephasing and its control by the spin-echo method.
Henry attempts to sneak into Eve’s residence undetected by taking advantage of his quantum coherence, but his quantum entanglement with Schred puts him in peril: Henry can no longer interfere with himself, he decoheres, since his two versions are differently tagged by correlations with different versions of Schred. Entanglement in composite systems is not only the hallmark of quantumness but also the key to its demise, alias decoherence. Decoherence, by transforming quantum information into classical information, is the biggest obstacle towards controlling complex quantum systems, particularly quantum computers. Information is collected and processed by “observers”: all life forms and their artificial (computerized) extensions. The question that reflects the millennia-long controversy on free will is: do observers have the freedom to choose the mode of their observation? The appendix to this chapechapter investigates the interference of two quantum systems as a function of their entanglement.
Henry seeks to to evade his foe, Eve, by controlling the phase of his superposition state. With this control, Henry can choose where to be or not to be, by having his two waves interfere with the same phase, thereby reinforcing each other, or with opposite phases, resulting in his two waves extinguishing each other. The historical debate on quantum interference and its competing interpretations is reviewed. The spin, an internal rotation of a quantum particle, which constitutes a two-state quantum system, is beneficial for understanding quantum interference and underlies a variety of applications, from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to quantum information (QI). Quantum interference allows an object to coexist in states of “being” and “non-being” at a given time. Such coexistence and QI logic contradict the basic dichotomy between being and nothingness postulated 2,500 years ago by Parmenides, yet they resonate with the teachings of the Buddhist thinker Nagarjuna.
In this thesis, we discuss the possibilities for suppression of decoherence, the loss of purity in an open quantum system, and the related process of dephasing. In the first chapter, we review the literature on the subject of open system dynamics, decoherence and methods of decoherence suppression. In the second chapter, we focus on the specific case of a rotationally hot diatomic molecule as an example of an open quantum system, where molecular vibrational wavepackets are subject to dephasing due to rovibrational coupling. We report analytical and numerical results addressing whether the dephasing rate can be controlled by adjustment of the initial wavepacket phases. It appears that over long timescales, phase-only control is not possible, but for earlier timescales the possibility of phase-only control of dephasing remains. In addition, we point out that the time-dependence of the dephasing process depends significantly upon the degeneracy of the rotational environment states. In the final chapter, we discuss the same system, but apply a qualitatively different method of dephasing suppression based on the nonlinear resonance effect in a driving field. We extend previous work on the topic (Shapiro et al. [1]) by considering the effect of using a train of laser pulses as the driving field, in place of a two-colour continuous-wave laser field. We demonstrate that the pulse train method can be more effective at suppressing dephasing than the two-colour CW case.
Manipulation of quantum interference requires that the system under control remains coherent, avoiding (or at least postponing) the phase randomization that can ensue from coupling to an uncontrolled environment. We show that closed-loop coherent control can be used to mitigate the rate of quantum dephasing in a gas-phase ensemble of potassium dimers (K2), which acts as a model system for testing the general concepts of controlling decoherence. Specifically, we adaptively shaped the light pulse used to prepare a vibrational wave packet in electronically excited K2, with the amplitude of quantum beats in the fluorescence signal used as an easily measured surrogate for the purpose of optimizing coherence. The optimal pulse increased the beat amplitude from below the noise level to well above it, and thereby increased the coherence life time as compared with the beats produced by a transform-limited pulse. Closed-loop methods can thus effectively identify states that are robust against dephasing without any previous information about the system-environment interaction.
The act of measurement on a quantum state is supposed to "dephase" (dephasing refers to the phenomenon that the states lose phase coherence; then the phases get randomized in interaction with a bath of other oscillators, which is referred to as "decoherence"), then "decohere" and "collapse" (or more precisely "register" and "reduce") the state into one of several eigenstates of the operator corresponding to the observable being measured. This measurement process is sometimes described as outside standard quantum-mechanical evolution and not calculable from Schrödinger's equation. Progress has, however, been made in studying this problem with two main calculation tools-one uses a time-independent Hamiltonian, while a rather more general approach proving that decoherence occurs under some generic conditions. The two general approaches to the study of wave-function collapse are as follows. The first approach, called the "consistent" or "decoherent"' histories approach, studies microscopic histories that diverge probabilistically and explains collapse as an event in our particular history. The other, referred to as the "environmental decoherence" approach studies the effect of the environment upon the quantum system, to explain wave-function decoherence which is produced by irreversible effects of various sorts. However, as we know, wave-function collapse is not related to thermal connection with the environment, rather, it is inherent to how measurements are performed by macroscopic apparata. In the "environmental decoherence" approach, one studies decoherence using a Markovian-approximated Master equation to study the time-evolution of the reduced density matrix (post dephasing) and obtains the long-time dependence of the off-diagonal elements of this matrix. The calculation in this paper studies the evolution of a quantum system starting with "dephasing" followed by the effects of the environment with some differences from prior analyses. We start from the Schrödinger equation for the state of the system, with a time-dependent Hamiltonian that reflects the actual microscopic interactions that are occurring. Then we systematically solve (exactly) for the time-evolved state, without invoking a Markovian approximation when writing out the effective time-evolution equation, i.e., keeping the evolution unitary until the end. This approach is useful, and it shows that the system wave-function will explicitly "un-collapse" if the measurement apparatus is sufficiently small. However, in the limit of a macroscopic system, this "dephasing" quickly leads to "decoherence"-collapse is a temporary state that will simply take extremely long (of the order of multiple universe lifetimes) to reverse. This has been attempted previously and our calculation is particularly simple and calculable. We make some connections to the work by Linden et al. while doing so. The calculation in this paper has interesting implications for the interpretation of the Wigner's friend experiment, as well as the Mott experiment, which is explored in "Connection to some general theoretical results" and "Recurrence times" (especially the enumerated points in "Recurrence times"). The upshot is that as long as Wigner's friend is macroscopically large (or uses a macroscopically large measuring instrument), no one needs to worry that Wigner would see something different from his friend. Indeed, Wigner's friend does not even need to be conscious during the measurement that she conducts. It also allows one to reasonably interpret some of the more recent thought experiments proposed. In particular, as a result of the mathematical analysis, the short-time behavior of a collapsing system, at least the one considered in this paper, is not exponential. Instead, it is the usual Fermi-golden rule result. The long-term behavior is, of course, still exponential. This is a second novel feature of the paper-we connect the short-term Fermi-golden rule (quadratic-in-time behavior) transition probability to the exponential long-time behavior of a collapsing wave-function in one continuous mathematical formulation.
This work presents Version 2.0 of Quantum Decoherence and Conditional Recoherence as Loss and Restoration of Shared Phase Influence, a clarification and extension of standard decoherence theory within orthodox quantum mechanics.The paper reframes quantum decoherence as the physical loss of shared phase influence between components of a quantum system due to unavoidable entanglement with environmental degrees of freedom. Using standard density-matrix and system–environment coupling formalisms, decoherence is shown to correspond to dispersal of phase information into the environment rather than destruction of quantum states or invocation of fundamental wavefunction collapse.Conditional recoherence is treated within the same framework, demonstrating that restoration of coherence is possible only under constrained physical conditions where phase information has not irreversibly propagated into uncontrolled environmental modes. Known mechanisms such as spin-echo refocusing, dynamical decoupling, and quantum error correction are shown to be consistent with this interpretation.This Version 2.0 manuscript emphasizes structural clarity over speculative interpretation. It preserves unitary quantum dynamics, avoids observer-dependent or consciousness-based claims, and remains fully compatible with open-quantum-system formalisms including Lindblad-type master equations. The work provides a clearer physical account of measurement, irreversibility, and classical emergence without introducing new forces or modifying established quantum theory.The manuscript is intended for researchers and educators working in quantum foundations, open quantum systems, and quantum information theory, and is suitable for citation and pedagogical use.