Phase-space measurements, decoherence and classicality

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Brody, Dorje C., Graefe, Eva-Maria, Melanathuru, Rishindra
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866913804816744448
author Brody, Dorje C.
Graefe, Eva-Maria
Melanathuru, Rishindra
author_facet Brody, Dorje C.
Graefe, Eva-Maria
Melanathuru, Rishindra
contents The emergence of classical behaviour in quantum theory is often ascribed to the interaction of a quantum system with its environment, which can be interpreted as environmental monitoring of the system. As a result, off-diagonal elements of the density matrix of the system are damped in the basis of a preferred observable, often taken to be the position, leading to the phenomenon of decoherence. This effect can be modelled dynamically in terms of a Lindblad equation driven by the position operator. Here the question of decoherence resulting from a monitoring of position and momentum, i.e. a phase-space measurement, by the environment is addressed. There is no standard quantum observable corresponding to the detection of phase-space points, which is forbidden by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This issue is addressed by use of a coherent-state-based positive operator-valued measure (POVM) for modelling phase-space monitoring by the environment. In this scheme, decoherence in phase space implies the diagonalisation of the density matrix in both position and momentum representations. This is shown to be linked to a Lindblad dynamics where position and momentum appear as two independent Lindblad operators.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_19628
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Phase-space measurements, decoherence and classicality
Brody, Dorje C.
Graefe, Eva-Maria
Melanathuru, Rishindra
Quantum Physics
Mathematical Physics
The emergence of classical behaviour in quantum theory is often ascribed to the interaction of a quantum system with its environment, which can be interpreted as environmental monitoring of the system. As a result, off-diagonal elements of the density matrix of the system are damped in the basis of a preferred observable, often taken to be the position, leading to the phenomenon of decoherence. This effect can be modelled dynamically in terms of a Lindblad equation driven by the position operator. Here the question of decoherence resulting from a monitoring of position and momentum, i.e. a phase-space measurement, by the environment is addressed. There is no standard quantum observable corresponding to the detection of phase-space points, which is forbidden by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This issue is addressed by use of a coherent-state-based positive operator-valued measure (POVM) for modelling phase-space monitoring by the environment. In this scheme, decoherence in phase space implies the diagonalisation of the density matrix in both position and momentum representations. This is shown to be linked to a Lindblad dynamics where position and momentum appear as two independent Lindblad operators.
title Phase-space measurements, decoherence and classicality
topic Quantum Physics
Mathematical Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.19628