Preferred States of Open Electronic Systems

Abstract

System-environment interaction may introduce dynamic destruction of quantum coherence, resulting in a special representation named as pointer states. Here, pointer states of an open electronic system are studied. The decoherence effect is taken into account through two different models which are Büttiker's virtual probe model and electron-phonon interaction in the polaron picture. The pointer states of the system with different coupling strength are investigated. The pointer states are identified by tracking the eigenstates of the density matrix in real-time evolution. It is found that the pointer states can emerge for arbitrary coupling strength. And the pointer states deform to the eigenstates of the system in the strong coupling limit, which indicates the vanish of quantumness in the strong coupling limit.