Decoherence and Dissipation for a Quantum System Coupled to a Local Environment
Abstract
Decoherence and dissipation in quantum systems has been studied extensively in the context of Quantum Brownian Motion. Effective decoherence in coarse grained quantum systems has been a central issue in recent efforts by Zurek and by Hartle and Gell-Mann to address the Quantum Measurement Problem. Although these models can yield very general classical phenomenology, they are incapable of reproducing relevant characteristics expected of a local environment on a quantum system, such as the characteristic dependence of decoherence on environment spatial correlations. I discuss the characteristics of Quantum Brownian Motion in a local environment by examining aspects of first principle calculations and by the construction of phenomenological models. Effective quantum Langevin equations and master equations are presented in a variety of representations. Comparisons are made with standard results such as the Caldeira-Leggett master equation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-th/9310120,
title = {Decoherence and Dissipation for a Quantum System Coupled to a Local Environment},
author = {Michael R. Gallis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9310120},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
6 Pages (LaTeX), to appear in the Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Squeezed States and Uncertainty Relations