Decoherence, a concept known only to few physicists when the first edition appeared in 1996, has since become firmly established experimentally and understood theoretically, as well as widely reported in the literature. The major consequences of decoherence are the emergence of "classicality" in general, superselection rules, the border line between microscopic and macroscopic behavior in molecules and field theory, the emergence of classical spacetime, and the appearance of quantum jumps. The most important new developments in this rapidly evolving field are included in the second edition of this book, which has become a standard reference on the subject. All chapters have been thoroughly revised and updated. New fields of application now addressed span chaos theory, quantum information, neuroscience, primordial fluctuations in cosmology, black holes and string theory, experimental tests, and interpretational issues. While the major part of the book is concerned with environmental decoherence derived from a universal Schrödinger equation, later chapters address related or competing methods, such as consistent histories, open system dynamics, algebraic approaches, and collapse models.
A unique description of the phenomena that arise from the interaction between quantum systems and their environment. Because of the novel character of the approach discussed, the book addresses scientists from all fields of physics and related disciplines as well as students of physics.
Wick ordering of creation and annihilation operators is of fundamental importance for computing averages and correlations in quantum field theory and, by extension, in the Hudson–Parthasarathy theory of quantum stochastic processes, quantum mechanics, stochastic processes, and probability. This book develops the unified combinatorial framework behind these examples, starting with the simplest mathematically, and working up to the Fock space setting for quantum fields. Emphasizing ideas from combinatorics such as the role of lattice of partitions for multiple stochastic integrals by Wallstrom–Rota and combinatorial species by Joyal, it presents insights coming from quantum probability. It also introduces a 'field calculus' which acts as a succinct alternative to standard Feynman diagrams and formulates quantum field theory (cumulant moments, Dyson–Schwinger equation, tree expansions, 1-particle irreducibility) in this language. Featuring many worked examples, the book is aimed at mathematical physicists, quantum field theorists, and probabilists, including graduate and advanced undergraduate students.
A unique description of the phenomena that arise from the interaction between quantum systems and their environment. Because of the novel character of the approach discussed, the book addresses scientists from all fields of physics and related disciplines as well as students of physics.
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