Regensburg 2002 – scientific programme

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 22: Quantenph
änomene

DY 22.3: Talk

Tuesday, March 12, 2002, 12:00–12:15, H2

Quantum Brownian motion without quantum correlations — •Jens Eisert and Martin B. Plenio — Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London SW7 2BW, UK

We investigate the entanglement properties of the joint state of the distinguished quantum system and its environment in the quantum Brownian motion model. This model is a frequent starting point for investigations of environment-induced superselection. We find that there exists a large class of initial states for which no entanglement will be created at all between the system of salient interest and the environment. This analysis, which makes use of recent results on continuous-variable entanglement, shows that environment-induced superselection in quantum Brownian motion does not necessarily rely on genuine quantum correlations. Part of the motivation for this investigation stems from the observation that methods from quantum information theory may provide new insights into certain problems of statistical physics.