Related papers: Disappearance of macroscopic superpositions in per…
Macroscopic quantum superpositions are widely believed to be unobservable because large systems cannot be perfectly isolated from their environments. Here, we show that even under perfect isolation, intrinsic unitary dynamics with the…
Linear superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states (sometimes also called Schr\"odinger cat states) are usually almost immediately reduced to a statistical mixture if exposed to the dephasing influence of a dissipative…
For any choice of initial state and weak assumptions about the Hamiltonian, large isolated quantum systems undergoing Schrodinger evolution spend most of their time in macroscopic superposition states. The result follows from von Neumann's…
We present several examples where prominent quantum properties are transferred from a microscopic superposition to thermal states at high temperatures. Our work is motivated by an analogy of Schrodinger's cat paradox, where the state…
The dephasing influence of a dissipative environment reduces linear superpositions of macroscopically distinct quantum states (sometimes also called Schr\"odinger cat states) usually almost immediately to a statistical mixture. This process…
We study how macroscopic superpositions of coherent states produced by the nondissipative dynamics of binary mixtures of ultracold atoms are affected by atom losses. We identify different decoherence scenarios for symmetric or asymmetric…
A reason is discussed (may be not the only one) for why we do not see any superposition of macroscopic states in the real world. Under the general assumption that quantum macrostates are statistical ensembles of microstates, it is shown…
We investigate the onset of thermalization and quantum chaos in finite one-dimensional gapped systems of hard-core bosons. Integrability in these systems is broken by next-nearest-neighbor repulsive interactions, which also generate a…
We propose a quantum optical version of Schr\"{o}dinger's famous gedanken experiment in which the state of a microscopic system (a cavity field) becomes entangled with and disentangled from the state of a massive object (a movable mirror).…
This review is devoted to the problem of thermalization in a small isolated conglomerate of interacting constituents. A variety of physically important systems of intensive current interest belong to this category: complex atoms, molecules…
Environment induced decoherence entails the absence of quantum interference phenomena from the macroworld. The loss of coherence between superposed wave packets depends on their separation. The precise temporal course depends on the…
We propose a method for protecting fragile quantum superpositions in many-particle systems from dephasing by external classical noise. We call superpositions "fragile" if dephasing occurs particularly fast, because the noise couples very…
It is known that a macroscopic quantum superposition (MQS), when it is exposed to environment, decoheres at a rate scaling with the separation of its component states in phase space. This is more or less consistent with the well known…
We study the macroscopic superposition of light coherent states of the type Schrodinger cat states; analizying, in particular, the role of the temperature in the decoherence processes, characteristic of the superposition of macroscopic…
The fact that macroscopic systems approach thermal equilibrium may seem puzzling, for example, because it may seem to conflict with the time-reversibility of the microscopic dynamics. We here prove that in a macroscopic quantum system for a…
We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the thermalization of a local observable in a closed quantum system which offers an alternative explanation, independent of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, for the thermalization…
The ability to live in coherent superpositions is a signature trait of quantum systems and constitutes an irreplaceable resource for quantum-enhanced technologies. However, decoherence effects usually destroy quantum superpositions. It has…
We consider environment induced decoherence of quantum superpositions to mixtures in the limit in which that process is much faster than any competing one generated by the Hamiltonian $H_{\rm sys}$ of the isolated system. While the golden…
We investigate the mixed-state entanglement between two spins embedded in the XXZ Heisenberg chain under thermal equilibrium. By deriving an analytical expression for the entanglement of two-spin thermal states and extending this analysis…
Schr\"odinger's famous Gedankenexperiment has inspired multiple generations of physicists to think about apparent paradoxes that arise when the logic of quantum physics is applied to macroscopic objects. The development of quantum…