Internal Decoherence of a Gaussian Wave Packet in a Harmonic Potential

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a Gaussian wave packet in a harmonic potential loses coherence over time due to environmental interactions, analyzing the effects of temperature, damping, and initial states on decoherence.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological model for quantum dissipation in a harmonic oscillator environment, estimating decoherence times for various conditions.

Findings

Decoherence time varies with temperature and damping.

Initial state influences the rate of decoherence.

Environmental coupling causes pure states to evolve into mixed states.

Abstract

We have studied the quantum dissipative problem of a Gaussian wave packet under the influence of a harmonic potential. A phenomenological approach to dissipation is adopted in the light of the well-known model in which the environment is composed of a bath of non-interacting harmonic oscillators. As one of the effects of the coupling to the bath is the evolution of an initially pure wave packet into a statistical mixture, we estimate the characteristic time elapsed for this to occur for different regimes of temperature, damping, and also different initial states.