Decoherence and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics

Jurjen F. Koksma, Tomislav Prokopec, Michael G. Schmidt

Gregg S. Jaeger, Kevin Ann, Guillaume Adenier +4 more

Decoherence and disentanglement are phenomena central to quantum mechanics. Here, we consider the relative rates of decoherence and disentanglement in two‐qubit, three‐qubit, and two‐qutrit systems when subject to pure dephasing noise alone, and a very recent result for d×d systems. Of particular interest is the specific counterintuitive effect related to the nonadditivity of such weak noises, known as Entanglement Sudden Death (ESD), in which the entanglement of a composite quantum system goes abruptly to zero in finite time, coherence only exponentially decaying. We discuss these results in the context of the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Amit Hagar

We present a brief history of decoherence, from its roots in the foundations of classical statistical mechanics, to the current spin bath models in condensed matter physics. We then analyse the philosophical importance of decoherence in three different foundational problems, and find that its role in their solutions is less than that commonly believed. What makes decoherence more philosophically interesting, we argue, are the methodological issues it draws attention to, and the question of the universality of quantum mechanics.

M. Dugić

Fundamental as well as applied science appear substantially to depend on certain progress in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and particularly on the so‐called decoherence theory. Here, I present some new results on the foundations of the decoherence theory as well as a rather wide interest in this concern in the different fields of extensive scientific research (e.g. in modern physics, theory of macromolecules, modern technology, quantum information and computation theory).

Gianfausto Dell’Antonio, Rodolfo Figari, Alessandro Teta