Decoherence of anomalously-fluctuating states of finite macroscopic systems

Abstract

In quantum systems of a macroscopic size V, such as interacting many particles and quantum computers with many qubits, there exist pure states such that fluctuations of some intensive operator A is anomalously large, <δA^2> = O(V^0), which is much larger than that assumed in thermodynamics, <δA^2> = O(1/V). By making full use of the locality, we show, starting from Hamiltonians of macroscopic degrees of freedom, that such states decohere at anomalously fast rates when they are weakly perturbed from environments.

arXiv comment4 pages, no figure Proc. 7th Int. Symp. Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (ISQM-Tokyo '01) (to be published from World Scientific)