Lyapunov Generation of Entanglement and the Correspondence Principle

We show how a classically vanishing interaction generates entanglement between two initially nonentangled particles, without affecting their classical dynamics. For chaotic dynamics, the rate of entanglement is shown to saturate at the Lyapunov exponent of the classical dynamics as the interaction strength increases. In the saturation regime, the one-particle Wigner function follows classical dynamics better and better as one goes deeper and deeper in the semiclassical limit. This demonstrates that quantum-classical correspondence at the microscopic level requires neither high temperatures, nor coupling to a large number of external degrees of freedom

Long-Time Coherence in Echo Spectroscopy with π/2\pi/2--π\pi--π/2\pi/2 Pulse Sequence

Motivated by atom optics experiments, we investigate a new class of fidelity functions describing the reconstruction of quantum states by time-reversal operations as $M_{\mathrm{Da}}(t) = | <\psi | e^{i H_2 t / 2} e^{i H_1 t / 2} e^{-i H_2 t / 2} e^{-i H_1 t / 2} | \psi >|^2$. We show that the decay of $M_{\mathrm{Da}}$ is quartic in time at short times, and that it freezes well above the ergodic value at long times, when $H_2-H_1$ is not too large. The long-time saturation value of $M_{\mathrm{Da}}$ contains easily extractable information on the strength of decoherence in these systems.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Decoherence: Concepts and Examples

We give a pedagogical introduction to the process of decoherence - the irreversible emergence of classical properties through interaction with the environment. After discussing the general concepts, we present the following examples: Localisation of objects, quantum Zeno effect, classicality of fields and charges in QED, and decoherence in gravity theory. We finally emphasise the important interpretational features of decoherence.Comment: 24 pages, LATEX, 9 figures, needs macro lamuphys.sty, to appear in the Proceedings of the 10th Born Symposiu

Dynamics of Global Entanglement under Decoherence

We investigate the dynamics of global entanglement, the Meyer-Wallach measure, under decoherence, analytically. We study two important class of multi-partite entangled states, the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger and the W state. We obtain exact results for various models of system-environment interactions (decoherence). Our results shows distinctly different scaling behavior for these initially entangled states indicating a relative robustness of the W state, consistent with previous studies.Comment: 5 pages and 5 figure

Localization of Relative-Position of Two Atoms Induced by Spontaneous Emission

We revisit the back-action of emitted photons on the motion of the relative position of two cold atoms. We show that photon recoil resulting from the spontaneous emission can induce the localization of the relative position of the two atoms through the entanglement between the spatial motion of individual atoms and their emitted photons. The result provides a more realistic model for the analysis of the environment-induced localization of a macroscopic object.Comment: 8 pages and 4 figure

The General Correlation Function in the Schwinger Model on a Torus

In the framework of the Euclidean path integral approach we derive the exact formula for the general N-point chiral densities correlator in the Schwinger model on a torusComment: 17 pages, misprints corrected, references adde

Quantum particles from coarse grained classical probabilities in phase space

Quantum particles can be obtained from a classical probability distribution in phase space by a suitable coarse graining, whereby simultaneous classical information about position and momentum can be lost. For a suitable time evolution of the classical probabilities and choice of observables all features of a quantum particle in a potential follow from classical statistics. This includes interference, tunneling and the uncertainty relation.Comment: 19 page

Frame Combination Techniques for Ultra High-Contrast Imaging

We summarize here an experimental frame combination pipeline we developed for ultra high-contrast imaging with systems like the upcoming VLT SPHERE instrument. The pipeline combines strategies from the Drizzle technique, the Spitzer IRACproc package, and homegrown codes, to combine image sets that may include a rotating field of view and arbitrary shifts between frames. The pipeline is meant to be robust at dealing with data that may contain non-ideal effects like sub-pixel pointing errors, missing data points, non-symmetrical noise sources, arbitrary geometric distortions, and rapidly changing point spread functions. We summarize in this document individual steps and strategies, as well as results from preliminary tests and simulations.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, SPIE conference pape