Do the collisions of atoms in a gas have the effect of reducing the number of electrons whose wavefunctions are in superposition states? The idea is that these collisions are effectively interactions with the environment, which will cause superpositions states to decohere to energy eigenstates. Is that the case? Or is something else, or something more complicated, taking place?
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Yes it is decoherence. In general the reason as to why macroscopic quantum effects are hard to come by in everyday life is because of the large number of particles involves, hence many interactions and therefore decoherence from the purely quantum states (with off diagonal matrix elements) to the classical states (only diagonal elements). This is why the typical 2-slit experiment with matter waves needs to be performed in vacuo to get a clear interference pattern.
answered Jan 14, 2018 at 16:36