237 research outputs found
Deconstructing Decoherence
The study of environmentally induced superselection and of the process of
decoherence was originally motivated by the search for the emergence of
classical behavior out of the quantum substrate, in the macroscopic limit. This
limit, and other simplifying assumptions, have allowed the derivation of
several simple results characterizing the onset of environmentally induced
superselection; but these results are increasingly often regarded as a complete
phenomenological characterization of decoherence in any regime. This is not
necessarily the case: The examples presented in this paper counteract this
impression by violating several of the simple ``rules of thumb''. This is
relevant because decoherence is now beginning to be tested experimentally, and
one may anticipate that, in at least some of the proposed applications (e.g.,
quantum computers), only the basic principle of ``monitoring by the
environment'' will survive. The phenomenology of decoherence may turn out to be
significantly different.Comment: 13 two-column pages, 3 embedded figure
Exact Diagonalization of Two Quantum Models for the Damped Harmonic Oscillator
The damped harmonic oscillator is a workhorse for the study of dissipation in
quantum mechanics. However, despite its simplicity, this system has given rise
to some approximations whose validity and relation to more refined descriptions
deserve a thorough investigation. In this work, we apply a method that allows
us to diagonalize exactly the dissipative Hamiltonians that are frequently
adopted in the literature. Using this method we derive the conditions of
validity of the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) and show how this approximate
description relates to more general ones. We also show that the existence of
dissipative coherent states is intimately related to the RWA. Finally, through
the evaluation of the dynamics of the damped oscillator, we notice an important
property of the dissipative model that has not been properly accounted for in
previous works; namely, the necessity of new constraints to the application of
the factorizable initial conditions.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, ReVTe
Coarse Grainings and Irreversibility in Quantum Field Theory
In this paper we are interested in the studying coarse-graining in field
theories using the language of quantum open systems. Motivated by the ideas of
Calzetta and Hu on correlation histories we employ the Zwanzig projection
technique to obtain evolution equations for relevant observables in
self-interacting scalar field theories. Our coarse-graining operation consists
in concentrating solely on the evolution of the correlation functions of degree
less than , a treatment which corresponds to the familiar from statistical
mechanics truncation of the BBKGY hierarchy at the n-th level. We derive the
equations governing the evolution of mean field and two-point functions thus
identifying the terms corresponding to dissipation and noise. We discuss
possible applications of our formalism, the emergence of classical behaviour
and the connection to the decoherent histories framework.Comment: 25 pages, Late
Observer dependence for the phonon content of the sound field living on the effective curved space-time background of a Bose-Einstein condensate
We demonstrate that the ambiguity of the particle content for quantum fields
in a generally curved space-time can be experimentally investigated in an
ultracold gas of atoms forming a Bose-Einstein condensate. We explicitly
evaluate the response of a suitable condensed matter detector, an ``Atomic
Quantum Dot,'' which can be tuned to measure time intervals associated to
different effective acoustic space-times. It is found that the detector
response related to laboratory, ``adiabatic,'' and de Sitter time intervals is
finite in time and nonstationary, vanishing, and thermal, respectively.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures; references updated, as published in Physical
Review
Nonlinear dynamics for vortex lattice formation in a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate
We study the response of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate to a sudden
turn-on of a rotating drive by solving the two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii
equation. A weakly anisotropic rotating potential excites a quadrupole shape
oscillation and its time evolution is analyzed by the quasiparticle projection
method. A simple recurrence oscillation of surface mode populations is broken
in the quadrupole resonance region that depends on the trap anisotropy, causing
stochastization of the dynamics. In the presence of the phenomenological
dissipation, an initially irrotational condensate is found to undergo damped
elliptic deformation followed by unstable surface ripple excitations, some of
which develop into quantized vortices that eventually form a lattice. Recent
experimental results on the vortex nucleation should be explained not only by
the dynamical instability but also by the Landau instability; the latter is
necessary for the vortices to penetrate into the condensate.Comment: RevTex4, This preprint includes no figures. You can download the
complete article and figures at
http://matter.sci.osaka-cu.ac.jp/bsr/cond-mat.htm
Dynamical Aspects of Analogue Gravity: The Backreaction of Quantum Fluctuations in Dilute Bose-Einstein Condensates
We discuss the backreaction force exerted by quantum fluctuations in dilute
Bose-Einstein condensates onto the motion of the classical background, derived
by an ab initio approach from microscopic physics. It is shown that the
effective-action method, widely employed in semiclassical quantum gravity,
fails to give the full backreaction force. The failure of the effective-action
method is traced back, inter alia, to the problem of the correct choice of the
fundamental variables and the related operator ordering issues.Comment: 21+epsilon pages; has appeared in Springer Lecture Notes in Physic
Sympathetic cooling of an atomic Bose-Fermi gas mixture
Sympathetic cooling of an atomic Fermi gas by a Bose gas is studied by
solution of the coupled quantum Boltzmann equations for the confined gas
mixture. Results for equilibrium temperatures and relaxation dynamics are
presented, and some simple models developed. Our study illustrate that a
combination of sympathetic and forced evaporative cooling enables the Fermi gas
to be cooled to the degenerate regime where quantum statistics, and mean field
effects are important. The influence of mean field effects on the equilibrium
spatial distributions is discussed qualitatively.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.Let
Wigner Distribution Function Approach to Dissipative Problems in Quantum Mechanics with emphasis on Decoherence and Measurement Theory
We first review the usefulness of the Wigner distribution functions (WDF),
associated with Lindblad and pre-master equations, for analyzing a host of
problems in Quantum Optics where dissipation plays a major role, an arena where
weak coupling and long-time approximations are valid. However, we also show
their limitations for the discussion of decoherence, which is generally a
short-time phenomenon with decay rates typically much smaller than typical
dissipative decay rates. We discuss two approaches to the problem both of which
use a quantum Langevin equation (QLE) as a starting-point: (a) use of a reduced
WDF but in the context of an exact master equation (b) use of a WDF for the
complete system corresponding to entanglement at all times
Influence Functionals and the Accelerating Detector
The influence functional is derived for a massive scalar field in the ground
state, coupled to a uniformly accelerating DeWitt monopole detector in
dimensional Minkowski space. This confirms the local nature of the Unruh
effect, and provides an exact solution to the problem of the accelerating
detector without invoking a non-standard quantization. A directional detector
is presented which is efficiently decohered by the scalar field vacuum, and
which illustrates an important difference between the quantum mechanics of
inertial and non-inertial frames. From the results of these calculations, some
comments are made regarding the possibility of establishing a quantum
equivalence principle, so that the Hawking effect might be derived from the
Unruh effect.Comment: 32 page
Dynamical instability of a condensate induced by a rotating thermal gas
We study surface modes of the condensate in the presence of a rotating
thermal cloud in an axisymmetric trap. By considering collisions that transfer
atoms between the condensate and noncondensate, we find that modes which rotate
in the same sense as the thermal cloud damp less strongly than counter-rotating
modes. We show that above a critical angular rotation frequency, equivalent to
the Landau stability criterion, the co-rotating mode becomes dynamically
unstable, leading to the possibility of vortex nucleation. This kind of
mechanism is proposed as a natural explanation for the formation of vortices
observed recently in the experiment of Haljan \emph{et al} {[}P. C. Haljan
\emph{et al.}, cond-mat/0106362{]}. We also generalize our stability analysis
to treat the case where the stationary state of the condensate already
possesses a single vortex.Comment: 4 pages, no figure
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