Collisional decoherence of a tracer particle moving in one dimension

Ingo Kamleitner
Phys. Rev. A 82, 052104 – Published 2 November 2010

Abstract

We study decoherence of the external degree of freedom of a tracer particle moving in a one-dimensional dilute Boltzmann gas. We find that phase averaging is the dominant decoherence effect, rather than information exchange between tracer and gas particles. While a coherent superposition of two wave packets with different mean positions quickly turns into a mixed state, it is demonstrated that such superpositions of different momenta are robust to phase averaging, until the two wave packets acquire a different position due to the different velocity of each wave packet.

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  • Received 9 August 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.82.052104

©2010 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Ingo Kamleitner

  • Institut für Theory der Kondensierten Materie, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany and Centre for Quantum Computer Technology, Physics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia

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Vol. 82, Iss. 5 — November 2010

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