“Decoherence in closed and open systems”

MARIO CASTAGNINO; ROBERTO LAURA; OLIMPIA LOMBARDI

Peyresq

Congreso; Rencontre de Cosmologie IX; 2006

Universidad Libre de Bruselas

A generalized formal framework for decoherence, that can be used both in open and closed quantum systems, is sketched. In this context, the relationship between the decoherence of a closed system and the decoherence of its subsystems is studied, and the corresponding decoherence times, for the closed system and for the open system, are defined: for macroscopic systems, the time for the closed system >> the time for the open system. Finally, it is shown that the application of the new formal framework to a well-known model leads to physically adequate results.