Tagged Questions

2
votes
1answer
38 views

State emitting from an extended thermal source

This calculation is for a double slit experiment setup which is experiencing a far field radiation from an extended monochromatic thermal source. I assume the source is 1-D and it's length is $b$. ...
0
votes
0answers
31 views

Physical significance of effective wave function

In Yanhua Shih's book on quantum optics, the coherence functions are expressed in terms of effective wave function. Here are the expressions for single photon wave packets. To derive the coherence ...
3
votes
1answer
120 views

First order coherence function in terms of momentum distribution function

Can someone show me how the first order coherence function $G^1(r,r')\equiv \left \langle \hat{\Psi}(r)\hat{\Psi}(r') \right \rangle $ for a system of bosons is related to the momentum distribution ...
1
vote
1answer
132 views

Coherence, Entanglement, Correlation

Let's deal specifically with a two-level system. I understand that ``coherence'' is due to the off-diagonal elements in the density matrix $\rho(t) = \sum_{i}|\psi_i(t)\rangle p_i\langle\psi_i(t)|$ ...
0
votes
0answers
39 views

Photon detection rate for pure / mixed states coming from single mode point source

Let the pure states be in superposition of horizontal and vertically polarized basis states. They are arriving at the point detector one at a time. So, a pure state is $|\Psi\rangle = \alpha|V\rangle ...
7
votes
6answers
317 views

How does such strange microscopic behavior at the atomic level (quantum mechanics) lead to the macroscopic behavior at our level?

So, I'm only a high school student researching quantum physics, and I find it very interesting. However, there's one question that keeps nagging at me in the back of my head. How exactly do odd ...
3
votes
1answer
173 views

Does decoherence single out a preferred frame?

Environmentally induced decoherence makes wave function collapse unnecessary. But the environment, usually taken to be some heat bath, introduces a preferred frame. (That in which the total (spatial) ...