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His function and its environmental decoherence

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Acta Physica Hungarica Series B, Quantum Electronics

Abstract

In 1983. Wigner outlined a modified Schrödinger-von-Neumann equation of motion for macroobjects, to describe their typical coupling to the environment. This equation has become a principal model of environmental decoherence which is believed responsible for the emergence of classicality in macroscopic quantum systems. Typically, this happens gradually and asymptotically after a certain characteristic decoherence time. For the Wigner function, however, one can prove that it evolves perfectly into a classical (nonnegative) phase-space distribution after a finite time of decoherence.

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Correspondence to Lajos Diósi.

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Diósi, L. His function and its environmental decoherence. Acta Phys. Hung. B 20, 29–34 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1556/APH.20.2004.1-2.7

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