Collisional decoherence of a tracer particle moving in one dimension
Quantum Physics
2011-04-04 v2
Abstract
We study decoherence of the external degree of freedom of a tracer particle moving in a one dimensional dilute Boltzmann gas. We find that phase averaging is the dominant decoherence effect, rather than information exchange between tracer and gas particles. While a coherent superposition of two wave packets with different mean positions quickly turns into a mixed state, it is demonstrated that such superpositions of different momenta are robust to phase averaging, until the two wave packets acquire a different position due to the different velocity of each wave packet.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1007.4080,
title = {Collisional decoherence of a tracer particle moving in one dimension},
author = {Ingo Kamleitner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1007.4080},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
10 pages