Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 67: Quanteneffekte: Verschränkung und Dekohärenz 2
Q 67.6: Talk
Friday, March 16, 2012, 15:15–15:30, V7.01
(contribution withdrawn) Energetic consequences of pure decoherence — •C. Aris Dreismann1, Evan MacA. Gray2,3, and Tom P. Blach2,3 — 1Institute of Chemistry, TU Berlin — 2Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia — 3Queensland Micro- and Nanotechnology Centre, Australia
We consider the dynamics of open quantum systems exhibiting pure decoherence (i.e. without dissipation), e.g. the well known master equations of the so-called Lindblad form. They ensure positivity of the system's reduced density operator, but they also exhibit a distrurbing feature: an intrinsic increase of the system's energy [1]. This effect of decoherence has been theoretically shown [2,3] to be of rather general character, under the condition that the characteristic time of the process is sufficient short. Here we report first experimental evidence of this surprising effect, in the frame of attosecond neutron Compton scattering (NCS) from protons and deuterons (of H2 and D2) [4]. We also propose a qualitative theoretical understanding of the experimental results [4]. The observations stand in blatant contradiction to conventional theory of neutron scatering, in which decoherence (and, more general, a non-unitary evolution) plays no role.
[1] L. E. Ballentine, Phys. Rev. A 43 (1991) 9. [2] L. S. Schulman and B. Gaveau, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 (2006) 240405. [3] N. Erez et al. Nature 452 (2008) 724. [4] C. A. Chatzidimitriou-Dreismann, E. MacA. Gray and T. P. Blach, AIP Advances 1 (2011) 022118.