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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Published in | Journal of statistical physics Vol. 174; no. 4; pp. 800 - 807 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
New York
Springer US
01.02.2019
Springer Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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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. |
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ISSN: | 0022-4715 1572-9613 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s10955-018-2214-7 |