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Spontaneous Decoherence from Logarithmic Spectral Phase Deformations

Quantum Physics 2025-12-29 v4 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We examine a mechanism of spontaneous decoherence in which the generator of quantum dynamics is deformed to a logarithmically modified self-adjoint operator \begin{equation*} F_\beta(H) = H + \beta H \log \frac{H}{E_*} \end{equation*} for a positive self-adjoint Hamiltonian HH and a fixed reference scale E>0E_* > 0. Dynamical phases acquire energy-dependent factors exp[itβElog(E/E)]\exp[-it\beta E \log(E/E_*)], whose rapid variation across the spectrum suppresses interference between distinct energies through a non-stationary-phase mechanism. Stationary-phase analysis shows that oscillatory contributions to amplitudes decay at least as O(1/β)\mathcal{O}(1/|\beta|) when β|\beta| is large. Since Fβ(H)F_\beta(H) is self-adjoint for every real β\beta, the evolution operator Uβ(t)=exp[itFβ(H)]U_\beta(t) = \exp[-itF_\beta(H)] is unitary. The kinematical structure of quantum mechanics -- Hilbert-space inner products, projection operators, the Born rule -- remains unchanged. Decoherence arises as suppression of interference terms in coarse-grained observables and decoherence functionals, not as norm loss or stochastic collapse. Physical motivation for logarithmic spectral deformations comes from clock imperfections, renormalization-group and effective-action corrections introducing logE\log E terms, and semiclassical gravity analyses with complex actions generating spectral factors involving log(E/EP)\log(E/E_{\text{P}}). The mechanism is illustrated with two-level systems, quartic oscillators, FRW minisuperspace models, and Schwarzschild-interior-type Hamiltonians. Current superconducting-qubit coherence times constrain β105|\beta| \lesssim 10^{-5}; trapped ions, NV centers, and cold atoms could strengthen this to β108|\beta| \lesssim 10^{-8}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.09236,
  title  = {Spontaneous Decoherence from Logarithmic Spectral Phase Deformations},
  author = {Sridhar Tayur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.09236},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

16 pages; The dynamics is reformulated using a real, self-adjoint logarithmic spectral deformation, making unitarity explicit and clarifying decoherence as non-stationary-phase suppression of interference rather than norm loss or collapse. Interpretive appendix is removed

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:18:12.144Z