Abstract
We show that the “reduction of the wavepacket” caused by the interaction with the environment occurs on a timescale which is typically many orders of magnitude shorter than the relaxation timescale τ. In particular, we show that in a system interacting with a “canonical” heat bath of harmonic oscillators decorrelation timescale of two pieces of the wave-packet separated by N thermal de Broglie wavelengths is approximately τ/N2. Therefore, in the classical limit ℏ → 0 dynamical reversibility (τ → ∞) is compatible with “instantaneous” coherence loss.
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References
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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
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Zurek, W.H. (1986). Reduction of the Wavepacket: How Long Does it Take?. In: Moore, G.T., Scully, M.O. (eds) Frontiers of Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics. NATO ASI Series, vol 135. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2181-1_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2181-1_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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