Related papers: Decoherence Can Relax Cosmic Acceleration
Motivated by various systems in which quantum effects occur in classical backgrounds, we consider the dynamics of a classical particle as described by a coherent state that is coupled to a quantum bath via bi-quadratic interactions. We…
We apply the decoherence formalism to an interacting scalar field theory. In the spirit of the decoherence literature, we consider a "system field" and an "environment field" that interact via a cubic coupling. We solve for the propagator…
We investigate the sensitivity of quantum systems that are chaotic in a classical limit, to small perturbations of their equations of motion. This sensitivity, originally studied in the context of defining quantum chaos, is relevant to…
The decoherence induced on a single qubit by its interaction with the environment is studied. The environment is modelled as a scalar two-level boson system that can go through either first order or continuous excited state quantum phase…
This review summarizes and amplifies on recent investigations of coupled quantum dynamical systems in the short wavelength limit. We formulate and attempt to answer three fundamental questions: (i) What drives a dynamical quantum system to…
When quantum back-reaction by fluctuations, correlations and higher moments of a state becomes strong, semiclassical quantum mechanics resembles a dynamical system with a high-dimensional phase space. Here, systematic computational methods…
We present a model that naturally tunes a large positive cosmological constant to a small cosmological constant. A slowly rolling scalar field decreases the cosmological constant to a small negative value, causing the universe to contract,…
We calculate the reduced density matrix for the inflaton field in a model of chaotic inflation by tracing out degrees of freedom corresponding to various bosonic fields. We find a qualitatively new contribution to the density matrix given…
We study the backreaction of free quantum fields on a flat Robertson-Walker spacetime. Apart from renormalization freedom, the vacuum energy receives contributions from both the trace anomaly and the thermal nature of the quantum state. The…
We study the dynamics of quantum and classical correlations in the presence of nondissipative decoherence. We discover a class of initial states for which the quantum correlations, quantified by the quantum discord, are not destroyed by…
I give a pedagogical overview of decoherence and its role in providing a dynamical account of the quantum-to-classical transition. The formalism and concepts of decoherence theory are reviewed, followed by a survey of master equations and…
The recent transition from decelerated to accelerated expansion can be seen as a reflection (or "bounce") in the connection variable, defined by the inverse comoving Hubble length ($b=\dot a$, on-shell). We study the quantum cosmology of…
Building upon our recently established correspondence between quantum cosmology and the hydrogen atom [1], we investigate the specific sector of a negative cosmological constant ($\Lambda < 0$) in a flat FLRW universe with dust. While the…
Since inflationary perturbations must generically couple to all degrees of freedom present in the early Universe, it is more realistic to view these fluctuations as an open quantum system interacting with an environment. Then, on very…
Adopting the viewpoint that the standard perturbative quantization of general relativity provides an effective description of quantum gravity that is valid at ordinary energies, we show that gravity as an environment induces the rapid…
Decoherence of a quantum state coupled to an exterior environment is at the foundation of our understanding of the emergence of classical behavior from the quantum world, but how does it emerge in a finite closed quantum system? Here this…
We propose a new dark energy model for solving the cosmological fine-tuning and coincidence problems. A default assumption is that the fine-tuning problem disappears if we do not interpret dark energy as vacuum energy. The key idea to…
Scalar-tensor theory of gravity with non-minimal coupling is a fairly good candidate for dark energy, required to explain late-time cosmic evolution. Here we study the very early stage of evolution of the universe with a modified version of…
We study the momentum-space entanglement between the sub- and super-Hubble modes of a spectator scalar field, with a cubic $\lambda \phi^3$ interaction, in de Sitter space. Momentum-space entanglement has some universal properties for any…
Quantum decoherence arises due to uncontrollable entanglement between a system with its environment. However the effects of decoherence are often thought of and modeled through a simpler picture in which the role of the environment is to…