Entanglement and Nonunitary Evolution
High Energy Physics - Theory
2010-10-27 v2 Statistical Mechanics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Quantum Physics
Abstract
We consider a collapsing relativistic spherical shell for a free quantum field. Once the center of the wavefunction of the shell passes a certain radius R, the degrees of freedom inside R are traced over. We show that an observer outside this region will determine that the evolution of the system is nonunitary. We argue that this phenomenon is generic to entangled systems, and discuss a possible relation to black hole physics.
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-th/0609075,
title = {Entanglement and Nonunitary Evolution},
author = {Ram Brustein and Martin B. Einhorn and Amos Yarom},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/0609075},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
14 pages, 1 figure; Added a clarification regarding the relation with black hole physics