Spontaneous decoherence of coupled harmonic oscillators confined in a ring

作     者：ZhiRui Gong ZhenWei Zhang DaZhi Xu Nan Zhao ChangPu Sun 

作者机构：College of Physics and EnergyShenzhen UniversityShenzhen 518060China Beijing Computational Science Research CenterBeijing 100084China Center for Quantum Technology ResearchSchool of PhysicsBeijing Institute of TechnologyBeijing 100081China 

出 版 物：《Science China(Physics,Mechanics & Astronomy)》 (中国科学：物理学、力学、天文学（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2018年第61卷第4期

页      面：17-29页

核心收录：

学科分类：07[理学] 070201[理学-理论物理] 0702[理学-物理学] 

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.11504241,and 11374032) the National Key Basic Research Program(Grant No.2014CB848700) Natural Science Foundation of Shenzhen University(Grants No.201551) 

主　　题：spontaneous quantum decoherence periodic boundary condition gauge interaction 

摘      要：We study the spontaneous decoherence of coupled harmonic oscillators confined in a ring container, where the nearest-neighbor harmonic potentials are taken into consideration. Without any external symmetry-breaking field or surrounding environment, the quantum superposition state prepared in the relative degrees of freedom gradually loses its quantum coherence *** spontaneous decoherence is interpreted by the gauge couplings between the center-of-mass and the relative degrees of freedoms, which actually originate from the symmetries of the ring geometry and the corresponding nontrivial boundary *** particular, such spontaneous decoherence does not occur at all at the thermodynamic limit because the nontrivial boundary conditions become the trivial Born-von Karman boundary conditions when the perimeter of the ring container tends to *** investigation shows that a thermal macroscopic object with certain symmetries has a chance for its quantum properties to degrade even without applying an external symmetry-breaking field or surrounding environment.