Apparent wave function collapse caused by scattering

Tegmark, Max

doi:10.1007/bf00662807

Cited by 102 publications

(131 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(51 reference statements)

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“…For them the shrinkage of the off-diagonal matrix elements of ρ(r, r ) is a consequence of small scatterings, which according to them and to [4], are sufficient to reduce the off-diagonal values. But one should bear in mind that the thermal wavelength has nothing to do with external scatterings (e.g., the movement of matter on the star Sirius, as mentioned by Borel [7]).…”

Section: The Thermal Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The demonstration of Tegmark [4] claims not to use this assumption and has been quoted as if it were correct. Unfortunately it is not, and it violates energy conservation.…”

Section: Formal Scattering Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately it is not, and it violates energy conservation. The claim is made in [4]'s "Assumption 1" which is not about energy, only momentum. The breakdown in energy conservation comes from [4]'s "Assumption 2" which posits that a pk , which, aside from a δ-function, is the T -matrix, is independent of p. With this assumption a (bath) particle striking a low energy (test) particle or a high energy (test) particle do the same thing.…”

Section: Formal Scattering Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this we assume that the bath is itself in a thermal state. Other attempts have been made to maintain energy conservation in this calculation [4] but unfortunately they are not correct, as we will explain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The response to some of those questions is based on earlier calculations of Joos and Zeh [2,3] as well as work by Tegmark [4]. The essential feature, on which all else depends, is that the environment-meaning the myriad of tiny interactions that every observed particle experiences, makes the density matrix (ρ) of that particle nearly diagonal in coordinate space.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decoherence, the Density Matrix, the Thermal State and the Classical World

Gaveau

Schulman

2017

J Stat Phys

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Decoherence has been the basis for understanding the emergence of the classical world from its quantum underpinnings. Unfortunately the calculations establishing decoherence overshoot and, based on assumptions that break down, predict that with the passage of time the off-diagonal elements of the density matrix become arbitrarily small. It has been recognized by some authors that the thermal state, assumed to hold for systems in equilibrium, places a bound on off diagonal terms. In this article we establish-preserving the conservation of energy, as is not the case for previous work-that indeed the thermal state is an attractor under scattering. Moreover, the bound on the off-diagonal terms present in the thermal state does not contradict everyday experience.

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Section: The Thermal Statementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The demonstration of Tegmark [4] claims not to use this assumption and has been quoted as if it were correct. Unfortunately it is not, and it violates energy conservation.…”

Section: Formal Scattering Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Formal Scattering Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Decoherence, the Density Matrix, the Thermal State and the Classical World

Gaveau

Schulman

2017

J Stat Phys

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The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words?

1998

Self Cite

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As cutting-edge experiments display ever more extreme forms of non-classical behavior, the prevailing view on the interpretation of quantum mechanics appears to be gradually changing. A (highly unscientific) poll taken at the 1997 UMBC quantum mechanics workshop gave the once alldominant Copenhagen interpretation less than half of the votes. The Many Worlds interpretation (MWI) scored second, comfortably ahead of the Consistent Histories and Bohm interpretations. It is argued that since all the above-mentioned approaches to nonrelativistic quantum mechanics give identical cookbook prescriptions for how to calculate things in practice, practical-minded experimentalists, who have traditionally adopted the "shut-up-and-calculate interpretation", typically show little interest in whether cozy classical concepts are in fact real in some untestable metaphysical sense or merely the way we subjectively perceive a mathematically simpler world where the Schrödinger equation describes everything -and that they are therefore becoming less bothered by a profusion of worlds than by a profusion of words. Common objections to the MWI are discussed. It is argued that when environment-induced decoherence is taken into account, the experimental predictions of the MWI are identical to those of the Copenhagen interpretation except for an experiment involving a Byzantine form of "quantum suicide". This makes the choice between them purely a matter of taste, roughly equivalent to whether one believes mathematical language or human language to be more fundamental.

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Localization of Coherent Wave Packets in Plasmas due to Decoherence

Göcke

Röpke

2007

Contrib. Plasma Phys.

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Localization of electron and ion states in a plasma is considered, applying the picture of a test particle in a dissipative environment. The plasma environment is represented by the dielectric function. For the reduced statistical operator a quantum master equation in Born-Markov-approximation can be used to quantify the influence of the dissipative background, which gives rise to decoherence and friction. We compare localization of ions due to collisional decoherence with the electronic part with screened interaction and localization by the thermal radiation field. The usual procedure to treat ions classically and electrons as quantum objects is supported by comparing the width of robust states and the mean distance in plasmas.

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Apparent wave function collapse caused by scattering

Cited by 102 publications

References 34 publications

Decoherence, the Density Matrix, the Thermal State and the Classical World

Decoherence, the Density Matrix, the Thermal State and the Classical World

The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words?

Localization of Coherent Wave Packets in Plasmas due to Decoherence

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