An Intrinsic Limit to Quantum Coherence due to Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

by: Jasper van Wezel, Jeroen van den Brink, Jan Zaanen

Physical Review Letters, Vol. 94, No. 23. (2005)

View FullText article

Scitation (AIP), APS Permanent Link, DOI

Reviews [Write a review of this article]

There are no reviews of this article

Find related articles from these CiteULike users

dhbradshaw

Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

coherence

Abstract

We investigate the influence of spontaneous symmetry breaking on the decoherence of a many-particle quantum system. This decoherence process is analyzed in an exactly solvable model system that is known to be representative of symmetry broken macroscopic systems in equilibrium. It is shown that spontaneous symmetry breaking imposes a fundamental limit to the time that a system can stay quantum coherent. This universal time scale is tspon2N/(kBT), given in terms of the number of microscopic degrees of freedom N, temperature T, and the constants of Planck () and Boltzmann (kB).

@article{vanWezel-vandenBrink-Zaanen-2005, abstract = {We investigate the influence of spontaneous symmetry breaking on the decoherence of a many-particle quantum system. This decoherence process is analyzed in an exactly solvable model system that is known to be representative of symmetry broken macroscopic systems in equilibrium. It is shown that spontaneous symmetry breaking imposes a fundamental limit to the time that a system can stay quantum coherent. This universal time scale is tspon2N/(kBT), given in terms of the number of microscopic degrees of freedom N, temperature T, and the constants of Planck () and Boltzmann (kB).}, author = {van Wezel, Jasper and van den Brink, Jeroen and Zaanen, Jan }, citeulike-article-id = {928372}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.230401}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, keywords = {coherence}, number = {23}, posted-at = {2006-11-04 14:51:23}, priority = {3}, publisher = {APS}, title = {An Intrinsic Limit to Quantum Coherence due to Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking}, url = {http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal\&id=PRLTAO000094000023230401000001\&idtype=cvips\&gifs=yes}, volume = {94}, year = {2005} }

RIS record

TY - JOUR ID - vanWezel-vandenBrink-Zaanen-2005 L3 - citeulike-article-id:928372 TI - An Intrinsic Limit to Quantum Coherence due to Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking JF - Physical Review Letters VL - 94 IS - 23 PB - APS N2 - We investigate the influence of spontaneous symmetry breaking on the decoherence of a many-particle quantum system. This decoherence process is analyzed in an exactly solvable model system that is known to be representative of symmetry broken macroscopic systems in equilibrium. It is shown that spontaneous symmetry breaking imposes a fundamental limit to the time that a system can stay quantum coherent. This universal time scale is tspon2N/(kBT), given in terms of the number of microscopic degrees of freedom N, temperature T, and the constants of Planck () and Boltzmann (kB). KW - coherence AU - van Wezel, Jasper AU - van den Brink, Jeroen AU - Zaanen, Jan PY - 2005/// UR - http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRLTAO000094000023230401000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes ER -

RIS BibTeX