2003/03/11 by Alexandre Dominguez-Clarimon, Dominguez-Clarimon, Alexandre
Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed Matter (cond-mat) #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #cond-mat #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0303066
24 pages, 2 figures
arxiv created 2003/03/11 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We deduce from a microscopic point of view the equation that describes how the state of a particle crossing a medium decoheres. We apply our results to the example of a particle crossing a gas, computing explicitly the Lindblad operators in terms of the interaction potential between the particle and a target of the medium. We interpret the imaginary part of the refraction index as a loss of quantum coherence, that is reflected in the disappearance of interference patterns in a Young experiment.