Quantum Dynamics of a Particle in a Tracking Chamber

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Tracks in the Cloud Chamber

   • Rodolfo Figari, Alessandro Teta

   Pages 1-29

3. A Time-Dependent Analysis of Mott’s Model

   • Rodolfo Figari, Alessandro Teta

   Pages 31-61

4. Modeling Atoms as Multi-Channel Point Interactions

   • Rodolfo Figari, Alessandro Teta

   Pages 63-86

5. Concluding Remarks

   • Rodolfo Figari, Alessandro Teta

   Pages 87-90

6. Back Matter

   Pages 91-101

   PDF

In the original formulation of quantum mechanics the existence of a precise border between a microscopic world, governed by quantum mechanics, and a macroscopic world, described by classical mechanics was assumed. Modern theoretical and experimental physics has moved that border several times, carefully investigating its definition and making available to observation larger and larger quantum systems. The present book examines a paradigmatic case of the transition from quantum to classical behavior: A quantum particle is revealed in a tracking chamber as a trajectory obeying the laws of classical mechanics. The authors provide here a purely quantum-mechanical description of this behavior, thus helping to illuminate the nature of the border between the quantum and the classical.

• Classical behavior in quantum systems
• Classical tracks in a cloud chamber
• Environmental decoherence
• Microscopic-macroscopic boundary
• Quantum classical transition
• Quantum environments

• Dipartimento di Fisica - INFN sezione di Napoli, Università Federico II, Napoli, Italy

  Rodolfo Figari

• Dipartimento di Matematica, Sapienza Università di Roma, Roma, Italy

  Alessandro Teta

Policies and ethics