Decoherence of Fock States Leads to a Maximally Quantum State

Abstract

We consider the Wigner function evolution of Fock states $|n⟩$ linearly coupled to a Markovian bath of oscillators. In the absence of environmental coupling, apparent ``quantumness'' increases with $n$, but the presence of any environmental interaction causes high-$n$ states to lose their quantum features more rapidly than low-$n$ states. Using the negative volume of the Wigner function as a metric \cite{kenfack04}, we observe a time-dependent quantumness peak across the eigenstates.

5 pages, 2 figures