Probing Violation of Quantum Mechanics in the K 0 -Kbar 0 System

Patrick Huet

Masashi Yamaguchi, Michael McIntire, Eric L. Chronister

We report pressure (0–28 kbar) and temperature (1.1–4.3 K) dependent photon echo results for tetra-tert-butyl-terrylene (TBT) in a polyisobutylene (PIB) host. Increased pressure is found to increase the homogeneous dephasing rate over the temperature range of this study, in contrast to pressure dependent hole burning results reported for other polymer systems at somewhat higher temperatures (⩾4.2 K). A relatively small pressure increase (0 to 9 kbar) resulted in a change in the temperature dependence of the dephasing characterized by a lowering of the temperature power law exponent from ∼1.3 to ∼0.9. Further pressure increase above 9 kbar was characterized by an additional increase in the homogeneous dephasing rate without further change in the temperature exponent. The results are compared to high pressure photon echo studies of other polymer systems, and discussed in terms of the TLS (two-level-systems) model.

John R. Ellis, John S. Hagelin, D.V. Nanopoulos +1 more

John R. Ellis, Nick E. Mavromatos, D.V. Nanopoulos

Otto Berg, Eric L. Chronister

Pressure- and temperature-dependent photon echo results are obtained for pentacene doped polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). A unique pressure effect is observed in which the optical dephasing rate increases as the pressure is increased from ambient pressure to 4 kbar, above which the optical dephasing rate is pressure independent up to 43 kbar. The present results are also compared with pressure- and temperature-dependent photon echo results for rhodamine 101 in PMMA, in which the optical dephasing rate was completely insensitive to pressure over the range 0 to 30 kbar. A negative correlation is also observed between the optical dephasing rate and the spectral hole burning efficiency. Line broadening due to pressure induced spectral diffusion may be responsible for both the increased dephasing rate and the reduced spectral hole-burning at high pressure.

Christoph Adami

The Leggett-Garg inequalities probe the classical-quantum boundary by putting limits on the sum of pairwise correlation functions between classical measurement devices that consecutively measured the same quantum system. The apparent violation of these inequalities by standard quantum measurements has cast doubt on quantum mechanics' ability to consistently describe classical objects. Recent work has concluded that these inequalities cannot be violated by either strong or weak projective measurements [1]. Here I consider an entropic version of the Leggett-Garg inequalities that are different from the standard inequalities yet similar in form, and can be defined without reference to any particular observable. I find that the entropic inequalities also cannot be be violated by strong quantum measurements. The entropic inequalities can be extended to describe weak quantum measurements, and I show that these weak entropic Leggett-Garg inequalities cannot be violated either even though the quantum system remains unprojected, because the inequalities describe the classical measurement devices, not the quantum system. I conclude that quantum mechanics adequately describes classical devices, and that we should be careful not to assume that the classical devices accurately describe the quantum system.