Decoherence and Squeezed States
James K. Freericks
Quantum systems are rarely isolated, and often interact with a large number of degrees of freedom that we generically call the environment. As the system becomes entangled with the environment, it effectively loses the interference within the system because it transforms from a product state superposition to an entangled state superposition. Thus, when the system is measured, the interference effects within the system are reduced because we do not measure the entangled environment degrees of freedom. The details for how we describe the behavior of this so-called decoherence is complicated. In this chapter, we investigate how to formulate descriptions of decoherence, we apply this formalism to real systems such as nuclear magnetic resonance and the damped quantum harmonic oscillator, and then we examine the interplay between squeezing and decoherence in trapped ions and the implications for precision measurements.
Springer eBooks•Jan 1, 2026•0 citations