Related papers: Decoherence in Pre-Big-Bang Cosmology
We study the evironment-induced decoherence of cosmological perturbations in an inflationary background. Splitting our spectrum of perturbations into two distinct sets characterized by their wavelengths (super and sub-Hubble), we identify…
We introduce a Wheeler-De Witt approach to quantum cosmology based on the low-energy string effective action, with an effective dilaton potential included to account for non-perturbative effects and, possibly, higher-order corrections. We…
We consider departures from hamiltonian dynamics in the evolution of neutral kaons due to their interactions with environment that generate entanglement among them. We propose a phenomenological model of stochastic re-scattering and…
The effect of decoherence, induced by spontaneous emission, on the dynamics of cold atoms periodically kicked by an optical lattice is experimentally and theoretically studied. Ideally, the mean energy growth is essentially unaffected 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…
We present a theoretical framework to describe the effects of decoherence on matter waves in Talbot-Lau interferometry. Using a Wigner description of the stationary beam the loss of interference contrast can be calculated in closed form.…
We study the effects of gravitationally-driven decoherence on tunneling processes associated with false vacuum decays, such as the Coleman--De~Luccia instanton. We compute the thermal graviton-induced decoherence rate for a wave function…
We consider the hypothesis that nonlocal, omnidirectional, causally-coherent quantum entanglement of inflationary horizons may account for some well-known measured anomalies of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy on large angular…
We use general arguments to examine the energy scales for which a quantum coherent description of gravitating quantum energy units is necessary. The cosmological dark energy density is expected to decouple from the Friedman-Lemaitre energy…
Understanding the emergence of classical behavior from a quantum theory is vital to establishing the quantum origin for the temperature fluctuations observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We show that a real-space approach can…
In the second paper of this series we extend our Bayesian reanalysis of the evidence for a cosmic variation of the fine structure constant to the semi-parametric modelling regime. By adopting a mixture of Dirichlet processes prior for the…
The dynamics of an inhomogeneous universe is studied with the methods of Loop Quantum Cosmology as an example of the quantization of vacuum cosmological spacetimes containing gravitational waves (Gowdy spacetimes). The analysis performed at…
We analyse numerically the onset of pre-big bang inflation in an inhomogeneous, spherically symmetric Universe. Adding a small dilatonic perturbation to a trivial (Milne) background, we find that suitable regions of space undergo…
We discuss the various manifestations of quantum decoherence in the forms of dephasing, entanglement with the environment, and revelation of "which-path" information. As a specific example, we consider an electron interference experiment.…
The simple stationary decoherence of a two-state quantum system is discussed from a new viewpoint of environmental entanglement. My work emphasizes that an unconditional local state must totally be disentangled from the rest of the…
Quantum cosmology uses a wave function to model the universe, but finding solutions for this poses a problem as it is difficult to define the boundary conditions or identify the correct path for a path integral. We begin the discussion by…
We develop and examine the principles governing the formation of distortions in the cosmic microwave background. Distortions in the frequency or spectral distribution of the background probe the thermal history of the universe whereas those…
Using non-relativistic many body quantum field theory, a master equation is derived for the reduced density matrix of a dilute gas of massive particles undergoing scattering interactions with an environment of light particles. The dynamical…
Quantum mechanics allows for states in macroscopic superpositions, but they ordinarily undergo rapid decoherence due to interactions with their environment. A system that only interacts gravitationally, such as an arrangement of dark matter…
The quite different behaviors exhibited by microscopic and macroscopic systems with respect to quantum interferences suggest that there may exist a naturally frontier between quantum and classical worlds. The value of the Planck mass…