Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 040402 (2002) [4 pages]Quantum-Classical Transition in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems |
PRL Celebrates 50 Years
This Week's Milestone Letters are from 1984: |
Salman Habib1, Kurt Jacobs1, Hideo Mabuchi2, Robert Ryne3, Kosuke Shizume4, and Bala Sundaram5
1T-8, Theoretical Division, MS B285, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545
2Mail Code 12-33, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125
3Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, MS 71J, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720
4University of Library and Information Science, 1-2 Kasuga, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305, Japan
5Department of Mathematics & Graduate Faculty in Physics, CSI-CUNY, Staten Island, New York 10314
Received 31 October 2000; revised 6 August 2001; published 8 January 2002
Viewed as approximations to quantum mechanics, classical evolutions can violate the positive semidefiniteness of the density matrix. The nature of the violation suggests a classification of dynamical systems based on classical-quantum correspondence; we show that this can be used to identify when environmental interaction (decoherence) will be unsuccessful in inducing the quantum-classical transition. In particular, the late-time Wigner function can become positive without any corresponding approach to classical dynamics. In the light of these results, we emphasize key issues relevant for experiments studying the quantum-classical transition.
©2002 The American Physical Society
URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v88/e040402
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.040402
PACS: 03.65.Yz, 03.65.Sq, 05.45.Mt
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