Related papers: A toy model for Macroscopic Quantum Coherence

The precision of nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems is fundamentally limited, yet how quantum coherence shapes these limits remains largely unexplored. A general theoretical framework is introduced that explicitly links quantum coherence…

In this contribution I give a brief introduction to the essential concepts and mechanisms of decoherence by the environment. The emphasis will be not so much on technical details but rather on conceptual issues and the impact on the…

One of the fundamental questions in the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics is the role played by coherence in energetic processes that occur at the quantum level. Here, we address this issue by investigating two different quantum…

The well-known increase of the decoherence rate with the temperature, for a quantum system coupled to a linear thermal bath, holds no longer for a different bath dynamics. This is shown by means of a simple classical non-linear bath, as…

We introduce the idea of weakly coherent collisional models, where the elements of an environment interacting with a system of interest are prepared in states that are approximately thermal, but have an amount of coherence proportional to a…

This work proposes a series of quantum experiments that can, at least in principle, allow for examining microscopic mechanisms associated with decoherence. These experiments can be interpreted as a quantum-mechanical version of…

We analyze the notion of quantum coherence in an interference experiment. We let the phase shifts fluctuate according to a given statistical distribution and introduce a decoherence parameter, defined in terms of a generalized visibility of…

Quantum decoherence has been studied using nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR). By choosing one qubit to simulate environment, we examine the decoherence behavior of two quantum systems: a one qubit system and a two qubit system. The…

We show that the zero-point fluctuations of the intrinsic electromagnetic environment limit the phase coherence time in all mesoscopic systems at low temperatures. We derive this quantum noise limited dephasing time and its temperature…

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…

We discuss effects of loss of coherence in low energy quantum systems caused by or related to gravitation, referred to as gravitational decoherence. These effects, resulting from random metric fluctuations, for instance, promise to be…

The pre-existing literature on phenomena at the mesoscopic scale is concerned among other things with phase coherent transport. Phase coherent transport dominates at very low temperatures. With increase in temperature, as the system size…

The quantum and thermal fluctuations of the phase are investigated in a cold Bose gas confined by a double well trap. The coherence of the system is discussed in terms of the visibility of interference fringes in both momentum and…

The interaction of a quantum system with its environment causes decoherence, setting a fundamental limit on the suitability of a system for quantum information processing. However, we show that if the quantum system consists of coupled…

Quantum collision models normally consist of a system interacting with a set of ancillary units representing the environment. While these ancillary systems are usually assumed to be either two level systems (TLS) or harmonic oscillators, in…

Coherent effects manifested in light scattering from cold, optically dense and disordered atomic systems are reviewed from a primarily theoretical point of view. Development of the basic theoretical tools is then elaborated through several…

We discuss the notion of quantum mechanical coherence in its connection with time evolution and stationarity. The transition from coherence to decoherence is examined in terms of an equation for the time dependence of the density matrix. It…

We present a rigorous analysis of the phenomenon of decoherence for general N-level systems coupled to reservoirs of free massless bosonic fields. We apply our general results to the specific case of the qubit. Our approach does not involve…

The evolution of the quantum wave packet describing an atom trapped in the surface-tip junction of the scanning tunneling microscope is investigated by using the time-dependent Schroedinger equation, and by a quasi-classical Hamiltonian…

The decoherence of quantum states defines the transition between the quantum world and classical physics. Decoherence or, analogously, quantum mechanical collapse events pose fundamental questions regarding the interpretation of quantum…