On some unexplored decoherence aspects in the Caldeira-Leggett formalism: arrival time distributions, identical particles and diffraction in time

TL;DR

This paper investigates how decoherence affects quantum phenomena like arrival times, identical particles, and diffraction in time within the Caldeira-Leggett framework, revealing that temperature and relaxation rate control the quantum-to-classical transition.

Contribution

It explores unexplored aspects of decoherence in the Caldeira-Leggett model, including effects on interference patterns, identical particles, and diffraction phenomena, with new insights into environmental parameter influences.

Findings

Decoherence is unaffected by a constant force field.

Higher stretching parameters slow down decoherence.

Increasing temperature or relaxation rate diminishes diffraction effects.

Abstract

Some unexplored decoherence aspects within the Caldeira-Leggett master equation are analyzed and discussed. The decoherence process is controlled by the two environment parameters, the relaxation rate or friction and the temperature, leading to a gradual transition from the quantum to classical regime. Arrival time distributions, nonminimum-uncertainty-product or stretching Gaussian wave packets, identical particles and diffraction in time display interesting features during the decoherence process undergone by the time dependent interference patterns. We show that the presence of a constant force field does not affect the decoherence, {\it positive} values of the stretching parameter reduces the rate of decoherence, the symmetry of the wave function for identical particles plays no role when open dynamics are considered; and diffraction in time and space is gradually washed out by increasing the temperature and/or relaxation rate in the zero dissipation limit within the so-called quantum shutter problem.