Decoherence, pointer engineering and quantum state protection

We present a proposal for protecting states against decoherence, based on the engineering of pointer states. We apply this procedure to the vibrational motion of a trapped ion, and show how to protect qubits, squeezed states, approximate phase eigenstates and superpositions of coherent states.Comment: 1 figur

Quantum to classical transition in a system with a mixed classical dynamics

We study how decoherence rules the quantum-classical transition of the Kicked Harmonic Oscillator (KHO). When the amplitude of the kick is changed the system presents a classical dynamics that range from regular to a strong chaotic behavior. We show that for regular and mixed classical dynamics, and in the presence of noise, the distance between the classical and the quantum phase space distributions is proportional to a single parameter $\chi\equiv K\hbar_{\rm eff}^2/4D^{3/2}$ which relates the effective Planck constant $\hbar_{\rm eff}$, the kick amplitude $K$ and the diffusion constant $D$. This is valid when $\chi < 1$, a case that is always attainable in the semiclassical regime independently of the value of the strength of noise given by $D$. Our results extend a recent study performed in the chaotic regime.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Scaling laws for the decay of multiqubit entanglement

We investigate the decay of entanglement of generalized N-particle Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states interacting with independent reservoirs. Scaling laws for the decay of entanglement and for its finite-time extinction (sudden death) are derived for different types of reservoirs. The latter is found to increase with the number of particles. However, entanglement becomes arbitrarily small, and therefore useless as a resource, much before it completely disappears, around a time which is inversely proportional to the number of particles. We also show that the decay of multi-particle GHZ states can generate bound entangled states.Comment: Minor mistakes correcte

Decoherence and the quantum-classical limit in the presence of chaos

We investigate how decoherence affects the short-time separation between quantum and classical dynamics for classically chaotic systems, within the framework of a specific model. For a wide range of parameters, the distance between the corresponding phase-space distributions depends on a single parameter $\chi$ that relates an effective Planck constant $\hbar_{\rm eff}$, the Lyapunov coeffficient, and the diffusion constant. This distance peaks at a time that depends logarithmically on $\hbar_{\rm eff}$, in agreement with previous estimations of the separation time for Hamiltonian systems. However, for $\chi\lesssim 1$, the separation remains small, going down with $\hbar_{\rm eff}^2$, so the concept of separation time loses its meaning.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures (in 6 postscript files) two of them are color figure