Wednesday, December 9, 2009

When does the wavefunction collapse in nuclear collisions?

I had some great discussions today at ANU with Cedric Simenel and David Hinde about decoherence in nuclear collisions. One of the key issues became clearer to me. Suppose a projectile nucleus in its ground state |P> collides with a target nucleus in its ground state |T>. After the collision one observes the projectile to be in state |P> with probability |a|^2 and in state |P*> with probability |b|^2.
Simple scattering theory would say that the state of the whole system is
|Psi> = a |P>|T> + b |P*>|T*>
and the reduced density matrix for P has non-zero off-diagonal terms which only disappear after the measurement is made by the detectors.

However, I suspect that if the nuclei are large enough (i.e., have enough internal degrees of freedom) then the collision itself will decohere the superposition.

So, which is the correct picture? Presumably there is a "quantum-classical" crossover as the nuclei get heavier? Are there smoking gun experiments (e.g., Mott scattering of identical particles) to distinguish the two pictures?

1 comment:

  1. Nuclear topology and reactions appear through detectors, yet the research validity of an atomic topological function with high data density will exceed SEM/AFM optical imaging by application in software modeling with interactive animation based on relative quantum wavefunction physics. Recent advancements in quantum science have produced the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model imaging function, in terms of chronons and spacons for exact, quantized, relativistic animation. This format returns clear numerical data for a full spectrum of variables. The atom's RQT (relative quantum topological) data point imaging function is built by combination of the relativistic Einstein-Lorenz transform functions for time, mass, and energy with the workon quantized electromagnetic wave equations for frequency and wavelength.

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    Those 26 energy data values intersect the sizes of the fundamental physical constants: h, h-bar, delta, nuclear magneton, beta magneton, k (series). They quantize atomic dynamics by acting as fulcrum particles. The result is the exact picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model data point imaging function, responsive to keyboard input of virtual photon gain events by relativistic, quantized shifts of electron, force, and energy field states and positions.

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