Related papers: Decoherence in Pre-Big-Bang Cosmology
We study the loss of spatial coherence in the extended wave function of fullerenes due to collisions with background gases. From the gradual suppression of quantum interference with increasing gas pressure we are able to support…
A two-slit interference of a massive particle in the presence of environment induced decoherence is theoretically analyzed using a fully quantum mechanical calculation. The Markovian Master equation, derived from coupling the particle to a…
We present a simple calculation leading to the quantum gravitationally-induced decoherence of a spatial superposition of a massive object in the linear coupling regime. The point of this calculation is to illustrate that the…
The decoherence of a quantum system $S$ coupled to a quantum environment $E$ is considered. For states chosen uniformly at random from the unit hypersphere in the Hilbert space of the closed system $S+E$ we derive a scaling relationship for…
One of the most significant debates of our time is whether our macroscopic world (i) naturally emerges from quantum mechanics or (ii) requires new physics. We argue for the latter and propose a simple gravitational self-decoherence…
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…
The coupling of a mesoscopic system with its environment usually causes total decoherence: at long times the reduced density matrix of the system evolves in time to a limit which is independent of its initial value, losing all the quantum…
Transition to the semiclassical behaviour and the decoherence process for inhomogeneous perturbations generated from the vacuum state during an inflationary stage in the early Universe are considered both in the Heisenberg and the…
Using the squeezed state formalism the coherent state representation of quantum fluctuations in an expanding universe is derived. It is shown that this provides a useful alternative to the Wigner function as a phase space representation of…
We sketch a quantum mechanical framework for the universe as a whole. Within that framework we propose a program for describing the ultimate origin in quantum cosmology of the quasiclassical domain of familiar experience and for…
The suggestion that we occupy a privileged position near the centre of a large, nonlinear, and nearly spherical void has recently attracted much attention as an alternative to dark energy. Putting aside the philosophical problems with this…
Predecoherence, as its name indicates, is the same physical effect as decoherence, originating in the same interactions with an environment, injecting also incoherence and breaking unitarity. But whereas decoherence acts immediately after a…
We study cosmological perturbations in the context of an interacting dark energy model, in which the cosmological term decays linearly with the Hubble parameter, with concomitant matter production. A previous joint analysis of the…
The current understanding of structure formation in the early universe is mainly built on a magnification of quantum fluctuations in an initial vacuum state during an early phase of accelerated universe expansion. One usually describes this…
Current astronomical observations are successfully explained by the present cosmological paradigm based on the concordance model ($\Lambda_0$CDM + Inflation). However, such a scenario is composed of a heterogeneous mix of ingredients for…
Based on a more careful canonical analysis, we motivate a reduced quantization - in the sense of superspace quantization - of slightly inhomogeneous cosmology in place of the Dirac quantization in the existing literature, and provide it in…
We solve exactly the (linear order) equations for tensor and scalar perturbations over the homogeneous, isotropic, open pre-big bang model recently discussed by several authors. We find that the parametric amplification of vacuum…
In quantum cosmology, one has to select a specific wave function solution of the quantum state equations under consideration in order to obtain concrete results. The simplest choices have been already explored, in different frameworks,…
In quantum information theory, quantum discord has been proposed as a tool to characterise the presence of "quantum correlations" between the subparts of a given system. Whether a system behaves quantum-mechanically or classically is…
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…