1999/04/26 by P. Facchi, A. Mariano, S. Pascazio
Physics and Astronomy · #quant-ph
published as Acta Phys.Slov. 49 (1999) 677-682 · 6 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the Sixth Central-European Workshop on Quantum Optics, Chudobin near Olomouc, Czech Republic, April-May 1999
arxiv created 1999/04/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We analyze the coherence properties of a cold or a thermal neutron by utilizing the Wigner quasidistribution function. We look in particular at a recent experiment performed by Badurek \em et al., in which a polarized neutron crosses a magnetic field that is orthogonal to its spin, producing highly non-classical states. The quantal coherence is extremely sensitive to the field fluctuation at high neutron momenta. A "decoherence parameter" is introduced in order to get quantitative estimates of the losses of coherence.