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Decoherence in the kinetic regime
Probability| Speaker: | Riccardo Adami, University of Milano Bicocca |
| Location: | 2112 MSB |
| Start time: | Wed, Apr 1 2009, 4:10PM |
Description
The dynamics of a system consisting of an electron and a phonon
field is described by a Schroedinger equation on the tensor product of a
bosonic Fock space with the space of the electron's wave functions. As
initial state of the electron we choose the superposition of two
spatially localized distant bumps moving towards each other. The phonons
are initially a thermal state.
We study the kinetic limit of the dynamics of the system, and show that the
quantum interference between the two bumps decays exponentially in time,
with a decay rate proportional to the total scattering cross section of
the electron-phonon interaction. Such a phenomenon is called decoherence.
The result was obtained in collaboration with L. Erdos (Munich).