English

What are the systems that decohere?

Quantum Physics 2010-02-23 v1

Abstract

The fact that the Environment Induced Decoherence approach offers no general criterion to decide where to place the "cut" between system and environment has been considered as a serious conceptual problem of the proposal. In this letter we argue that this is actually a pseudo-problem, which is dissolved by the fact that decoherence is a phenomenon relative to the relevant observables selected by the measuring arrangement. We also show that, when the spin-bath model is studied from this perspective, certain unexpected results are obtained, as that of a system decohering in interaction with a very small environment.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1002.3913,
  title  = {What are the systems that decohere?},
  author = {Mario Castagnino and Sebastian Fortin and Olimpia Lombardi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1002.3913},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:49:19.739Z