Scope:
Quantifying the role and importance of decoherence in quantum many-body systems is
now pervasive in modern science and studies of quantum measurement and quantum
information. The concept of a reduced (but not closed) quantum system evolving in the
presence of weak couplings to an environment of complex states is common throughout
many disciplines.
Collisions of composite nuclei have conventionally been treated as closed quantum
systems, assuming a state-truncated model space, but in reality their evolution involves
innumerable intrinsic excitations of available open channels. These states may be
specific to particular degrees of freedom of the system and the collision dynamics,
such as weak binding or isospin asymmetry, and the collision energy. Among such
environments are (i) high level-densities of one- and multi-nucleonic excitations, (ii) the
breakup continua of decay channels (e.g. for weakly-bound nuclei).
Many of the key questions posed are common across disciplines and applicable
techniques have been advanced very significantly in other areas of few- and
many-body physics and chemistry. Molecular physics, for example, covers a wide
range of regimes involving ultrafast electronic and vibrational decoherence, as
well as situations where collective environmental modes create approximate
decoherence-free subspaces. Recent experiments on photosynthetic light-harvesting
systems provide strong evidence for the protection of excitonic coherence by the
protein environment. Accordingly, the available theoretical approaches include
Markovian and non-Markovian master equations as well as explicit, high-
dimensional quantum and mixed quantum-classical calculations of the combined
system and environment.
Topics the workshop will address are:
• What are the relative merits of alternative formulations of the quantum dynamical
evolution in the presence of environmental couplings, in particular with reference
to nuclear
dynamical systems?
•
How does
the effective decoherence time and the entropy production depend on
the
collision
energy, and how does this affect the issues above?
•
How does
the environment affect the reaction dynamics and which observables are
needed to quantify the effects of environment-induced quantum decoherence?
• What specific or classes of measurements on e.g. nuclear dynamical systems
might provide additional insights?
and its aims are:
• To both review and assess methods, recent investigations and implications of
quantum decoherence in atomic, molecular and other areas, and to relate these
to the nuclear physics context; providing both theoretical and experimental
perspectives.
• To create essential links between the nuclear physics community and practitioners
in other areas of science aimed at understanding fundamental aspects of quantum
physics, such as the role of decoherence and the quantum-to-classical transition.
• To initiate inter-disciplinary exchanges and the transfer of expertise, to foster
collaborations, and facilitate the formation of younger- researcher networks.
Attendance, registration and support:
Workshop registration is now completed. The ECT* is able to offer partial local
support (a fraction of the cost of single occupancy hotel accommodation and/or
meals) to a number of supported delegates. Those delegates that are supported
will be notified once registrations have been considered, in the context of the
overall balance and aims of the programme, at which point ECT* will ask delegate's
for their accommodation preferences and requirements. Except in highly exceptional
cases, travel costs cannot be supported. Support needs are invited at the time of
registration and will be considered given the ECT* budget allocation and the
number of accepted delegates.
Because of the wish of the organisers to foster strong interdisciplinary exchanges, it is
very strongly encouraged that potential delegates make plans to attend for the full duration
of the workshop.