dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaRadiation damping and decoherence in quantum electrodynamics
| Authors | Heinz-Peter Breuer, Francesco Petruccione |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | quant-ph/0210013 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0210013 |
| Journal | In: Heinz-Peter Breuer and Francesco Petruccione (Eds.), Relativistic quantum measurement and decoherence, Lecture Notes in Physics 559, pp. 31-65 (Springer, Berlin, 2000) |
Abstract
The processes of radiation damping and decoherence in Quantum Electrodynamics are studied from an open system's point of view. Employing functional techniques of field theory, the degrees of freedom of the radiation field are eliminated to obtain the influence phase functional which describes the reduced dynamics of the matter variables. The general theory is applied to the dynamics of a single electron in the radiation field. From a study of the wave packet dynamics a quantitative measure for the degree of decoherence, the decoherence function, is deduced. The latter is shown to describe the emergence of decoherence through the emission of bremsstrahlung caused by the relative motion of interfering wave packets. It is argued that this mechanism is the most fundamental process in Quantum Electrodynamics leading to the destruction of coherence, since it dominates for short times and because it is at work even in the electromagnetic field vacuum at zero temperature. It turns out that decoherence trough bremsstrahlung is very small for single electrons but extremely large for superpositions of many-particle states.
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"abstract": "The processes of radiation damping and decoherence in Quantum Electrodynamics\nare studied from an open system\u0027s point of view. Employing functional\ntechniques of field theory, the degrees of freedom of the radiation field are\neliminated to obtain the influence phase functional which describes the reduced\ndynamics of the matter variables. The general theory is applied to the dynamics\nof a single electron in the radiation field. From a study of the wave packet\ndynamics a quantitative measure for the degree of decoherence, the decoherence\nfunction, is deduced. The latter is shown to describe the emergence of\ndecoherence through the emission of bremsstrahlung caused by the relative\nmotion of interfering wave packets. It is argued that this mechanism is the\nmost fundamental process in Quantum Electrodynamics leading to the destruction\nof coherence, since it dominates for short times and because it is at work even\nin the electromagnetic field vacuum at zero temperature. It turns out that\ndecoherence trough bremsstrahlung is very small for single electrons but\nextremely large for superpositions of many-particle states.",
"arxiv_id": "quant-ph/0210013",
"authors": [
"Heinz-Peter Breuer",
"Francesco Petruccione"
],
"categories": [
"quant-ph"
],
"journal_ref": "In: Heinz-Peter Breuer and Francesco Petruccione (Eds.),\n Relativistic quantum measurement and decoherence, Lecture Notes in Physics\n 559, pp. 31-65 (Springer, Berlin, 2000)",
"title": "Radiation damping and decoherence in quantum electrodynamics",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0210013"
},
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