Related papers: Experimental investigation of quantum decay at sho…
This paper is a pedagogical yet critical introduction to the quantum description of unstable systems, mostly at the level of a graduate quantum mechanics course. Quantum decays appear in many different fields of physics, and their…
Results of theoretical studies of the quantum unstable systems caused that there are rather widespread belief that a universal feature od the quantum decay process is the presence of three time regimes of the decay process: the early time…
We modify the theory of the Quantum Zeno Effect to make it consistent with the postulates of quantum mechanics. This modification allows one, throughout a sequence of observations of an excited system, to address the nature of the…
We explore a possibility of measuring deviation from the exponential decay law in pure quantum systems. The power law behavior at late times of decay time profile is predicted in quantum mechanics, and has been experimentally attempted to…
An unstable quantum state generally decays following an exponential law, as environmental decoherence is expected to prevent the decay products from recombining to reconstruct the initial state. Here we show the existence of deviations from…
Open quantum-system dynamics can follow exponential decay, non-exponential relaxation, or oscillatory dynamics, depending on the system-environment coupling. We study a lattice with a boundary defect that transitions between these regimes,…
The spontaneous decay of an excited atom by photon emission is one of the most common and elementary physical process present in nature and in laboratories. The decay is random in time with constant probability density, as it can be…
Time evolution of the decay process of unstable particles is investigated in field theory models. We first formulate how to renormalize the non-decay amplitude beyond perturbation theory and then discuss short-time behavior of very…
The short-time behavior of quantum decay of an unstable state initially located within an interaction region of finite range is investigated using a resonant expansion of the survival amplitude. It is shown that in general the short-time…
While exponential decay is ubiquitous in Nature, deviations at both short and long times are dictated by quantum mechanics. Non-exponential decay is known to arise due to the possibility of reconstructing the initial state from the decaying…
The temporal evolution of an unstable quantum mechanical system undergoing repeated measurements is investigated. In general, by changing the time interval between successive measurements, the decay can be accelerated (inverse quantum Zeno…
We investigate the spontaneous emission of a two-level system coupled to a photonic waveguide, showing that dynamical dephasing in the photon modes profoundly alters the decay law. In the absence of dephasing, the emitter displays…
We report the first observation of the Quantum Zeno and Anti-Zeno effects in an unstable system. Cold sodium atoms are trapped in a far-detuned standing wave of light that is accelerated for a controlled duration. For a large acceleration…
The evolution of a quantum system is supposed to be impeded by measurement of an involved observable. This effect has been proven indistinguishable from the effect of dephasing the system's wave function, except in an individual quantum…
We study the decay process of an unstable quantum system, especially the deviation from the exponential decay law. We show that the exponential period no longer exists in the case of the s-wave decay with small $Q$ value, where the $Q$…
We use (nonconservative) dynamical semigroups to investigate the decay law of a quantum unstable system weakly coupled with a large environment. We find that the deviations from the classical exponential law are small and can be safely…
We present a detailed non-perturbative analysis of the time-evolution of a well-known quantum-mechanical system - a particle between potential walls - describing the decay of unstable states. For sufficiently high barriers, corresponding to…
The decay of a quasiparticle in an isolated quantum dot is considered. At relatively small time the probability to find the system in the initial state decays exponentially: $P(t)\sim \exp(-\Gamma t)$, in accordance with the golden rule.…
The decay of photoexcited quantum systems (examples are photodissociation of molecules and autoionization of atoms) can be viewed as a half-collision process (an incoming photon excites the system which subsequently decays by dissociation…
After reviewing the description of an unstable state in the framework of Lee Hamiltonians (valid both for Quantum Mechanics (QM) and Quantum Field Theory (QFT)), we consider some theoretical aspects of non-exponential decays: the case of…