17,302 research outputs found
Microcanonical Ensemble and Algebra of Conserved Generators for Generalized Quantum Dynamics
It has recently been shown, by application of statistical mechanical methods
to determine the canonical ensemble governing the equilibrium distribution of
operator initial values, that complex quantum field theory can emerge as a
statistical approximation to an underlying generalized quantum dynamics. This
result was obtained by an argument based on a Ward identity analogous to the
equipartition theorem of classical statistical mechanics. We construct here a
microcanonical ensemble which forms the basis of this canonical ensemble. This
construction enables us to define the microcanonical entropy and free energy of
the field configuration of the equilibrium distribution and to study the
stability of the canonical ensemble. We also study the algebraic structure of
the conserved generators from which the microcanonical and canonical ensembles
are constructed, and the flows they induce on the phase space.Comment: Plain TeX, 18 pages. Corrected report number onl
Remarks on a Proposed Super-Kamiokande Test for Quantum Gravity Induced Decoherence Effects
Lisi, Marrone, and Montanino have recently proposed a test for quantum
gravity induced decoherence effects in neutrino oscillations observed at
Super-Kamiokande. We comment here that their equations have the same
qualitative form as the energy conserving objective state vector reduction
equations discussed by a number of authors. However, using the Planckian
parameter value proposed to explain state vector reduction leads to a neutrino
oscillation effect many orders of magnitude smaller than would be detectable at
Super-Kamiokande. Similar estimates hold for the Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber
spontaneous localization approach to state vector reduction, and our remarks
are relevant as well to proposed meson and meson tests of gravity
induced decoherence.Comment: 10 pages, plain Tex, no figure
Dynamical Reduction Models with General Gaussian Noises
We consider the effect of replacing in stochastic differential equations
leading to the dynamical collapse of the statevector, white noise stochastic
processes with non white ones. We prove that such a modification can be
consistently performed without altering the most interesting features of the
previous models. One of the reasons to discuss this matter derives from the
desire of being allowed to deal with physical stochastic fields, such as the
gravitational one, which cannot give rise to white noises. From our point of
view the most relevant motivation for the approach we propose here derives from
the fact that in relativistic models the occurrence of white noises is the main
responsible for the appearance of untractable divergences. Therefore, one can
hope that resorting to non white noises one can overcome such a difficulty. We
investigate stochastic equations with non white noises, we discuss their
reduction properties and their physical implications. Our analysis has a
precise interest not only for the above mentioned subject but also for the
general study of dissipative systems and decoherence.Comment: 22 pages, Late
Multi-particle Correlations in Quaternionic Quantum Systems
We investigate the outcomes of measurements on correlated, few-body quantum
systems described by a quaternionic quantum mechanics that allows for regions
of quaternionic curvature. We find that a multi-particle interferometry
experiment using a correlated system of four nonrelativistic, spin-half
particles has the potential to detect the presence of quaternionic curvature.
Two-body systems, however, are shown to give predictions identical to those of
standard quantum mechanics when relative angles are used in the construction of
the operators corresponding to measurements of particle spin components.Comment: REVTeX 3.0, 16 pages, no figures, UM-P-94/54, RCHEP-94/1
Radiative and Collisional Energy Loss, and Photon-Tagged Jets at RHIC
The suppression of single jets at high transverse momenta in a quark-gluon
plasma is studied at RHIC energies, and the additional information provided by
a photon tag is included. The energy loss of hard jets traversing through the
medium is evaluated in the AMY formalism, by consistently taking into account
the contributions from radiative events and from elastic collisions at leading
order in the coupling. The strongly-interacting medium in these collisions is
modelled with (3+1)-dimensional ideal relativistic hydrodynamics. Putting these
ingredients together with a complete set of photon-production processes, we
present a calculation of the nuclear modification of single jets and
photon-tagged jets at RHIC.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, contributed to the 3rd International Conference
on Hard and Electro-Magnetic Probes of High-Energy Nuclear Collisions (Hard
Probes 2008), typos corrected, published versio
Overview of the Status and Strangeness Capabilities of STAR
STAR is a large acceptance spectrometer capable of precision measurements of
a wide variety of strange particles. We discuss the STAR detector, its
configuration during the first two years of RHIC operation, and its initial
performance for Au+Au collisions. The expected performance for strangeness
physics and initial data on strange particle reconstruction in Au+Au collisions
are presented.Comment: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Strangeness in
Quark Matter, Berkeley, California, July 20-25, 200
Comments on Proposed Gravitational Modifications of Schrodinger Dynamics and their Experimental Implications
We discuss aspects of gravitational modifications of Schrodinger dynamics
proposed by Diosi and Penrose. We consider first the Diosi-Penrose criterion
for gravitationally induced state vector reduction, and compute the reduction
time expected for a superposition of a uniform density cubical solid in two
positions displaced by a small fraction of the cube side. We show that the
predicted effect is much smaller than would be observable in the proposed
Marshall et al. mirror experiment. We then consider the ``Schrodinger -Newton''
equation for an N-particle system. We show that in the independent particle
approximation, it differs from the usual Hartree approximation applied to the
Newtonian potential by self-interaction terms, which do not have a consistent
Born rule interpretation. This raises doubts about the use of the
Schrodinger-Newton equation to calculate gravitational effects on molecular
interference experiments. When the effects of Newtonian gravitation on
molecular diffraction are calculated using the standard many-body Schrodinger
equation, no washing out of the interference pattern is predicted.Comment: Tex, 17
Collapse models with non-white noises
We set up a general formalism for models of spontaneous wave function
collapse with dynamics represented by a stochastic differential equation driven
by general Gaussian noises, not necessarily white in time. In particular, we
show that the non-Schrodinger terms of the equation induce the collapse of the
wave function to one of the common eigenstates of the collapsing operators, and
that the collapse occurs with the correct quantum probabilities. We also
develop a perturbation expansion of the solution of the equation with respect
to the parameter which sets the strength of the collapse process; such an
approximation allows one to compute the leading order terms for the deviations
of the predictions of collapse models with respect to those of standard quantum
mechanics. This analysis shows that to leading order, the ``imaginary'' noise
trick can be used for non-white Gaussian noise.Comment: Latex, 20 pages;references added and minor revisions; published as J.
Phys. A: Math. Theor. {\bf 40} (2007) 15083-1509
Quasistationary quaternionic Hamiltonians and complex stochastic maps
We show that the complex projections of time-dependent -quasianti-Hermitian quaternionic Hamiltonian dynamics are complex stochastic
dynamics in the space of complex quasi-Hermitian density matrices if and only
if a quasistationarity condition is fulfilled, i. e., if and only if is
an Hermitian positive time-independent complex operator. An example is also
discussed.Comment: Submitted to J. Phys. A on October 25 200
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