Decoherence and Phase Transitions in Quantum Dynamics

A particle with internal degrees of freedom is in contact with a bath of photons (necessitating a relativistic treatment). The occurrence of decoherence is established and the density matrix is found to be diagonal in momentum space. In the case of non-trivial internal degrees of freedom and selecti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of statistical physics Vol. 174; no. 4; pp. 800 - 807
Main Authors Gaveau, B., Schulman, L. S.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.02.2019
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Background radiation
Degrees of freedom
Detection equipment
Mathematical and Computational Physics
Phase transitions
Photons
Physical Chemistry
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Quantum mechanics
Quantum Physics
Statistical Physics and Dynamical Systems
Theoretical
Universities and colleges
Density matrix
Decoherence
Thermal state
Phase transition
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Summary:A particle with internal degrees of freedom is in contact with a bath of photons (necessitating a relativistic treatment). The occurrence of decoherence is established and the density matrix is found to be diagonal in momentum space. In the case of non-trivial internal degrees of freedom and selection rules there is a first order phase transition separating those degrees of freedom. Finally, because probability amplitudes become probabilities, Einstein’s proposal that more than one detector could respond to a signal is answered.
ISSN:0022-4715
1572-9613
DOI:10.1007/s10955-018-2214-7