Lab Home | Phone | Search
Center for Nonlinear Studies  Center for Nonlinear Studies
 Home 
 People 
 Current 
 Postdocs 
 Visitors 
 Students 
 Research 
 Publications 
 Conferences 
 Workshops 
 Sponsorship 
 Talks 
 Seminars 
 Postdoc Seminars Archive 
 Quantum Lunch 
 Quantum Lunch Archive 
 P/T Colloquia 
 Archive 
 Ulam Scholar 
 
 Postdoc Nominations 
 Students 
 Student Program 
 Visitors 
 Description 
 Past Visitors 
 Services 
 General 
 
 History of CNLS 
 
 Maps, Directions 
 CNLS Office 
 T-Division 
 LANL 
 
Tuesday, June 04, 2024
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
CNLS Conference Room (TA-3, Bldg 1690)

Seminar

DECOHERENCE AND QUANTUM DARWINISM: FROM QUANTUM FOUNDATIONS TO CLASSICAL REALITY

Wojciech H. Zurek
T

I will describe three insights into the transition from quantum to classical. After a brief discussion of decoherenceI will give (i) a minimalist (and decoherence-free) derivation of preferred states. Quantum jumps to such pointerstates define "events" (e.g., measurement outcomes). Enhanced role of information in quantum theory and its rolein the wavepacket collapse will be noted. Probabilities and (ii) Born's rule (pk = |ψk|2) can be then derived from thesymmetries of entangled quantum states. With probabilities at hand one can analyze information flows from thesystem to the environment in course of decoherence. They explain how (iii) robust classical reality arises, via Quan-tum Darwinism, from the quantum substrate by accounting for the evidence of objective existence of the pointerstates of quantum systems through the redundancy of their records in the environment. Taken together, and in theright order, these three advances (i)-(iii) elucidate quantum origins of the classical.

WHZ, Physics Today 67 (10), 44-50 (2014); Entropy 24 (11), 1520 (2022);
Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism: From Quantum Foundations to Classical Reality (Cambridge UniversityPress, forthcoming).

Bio: Wojciech Hubert Zurek is a physicist with expertise in quantum theory. His research focuses on quantum-to-classical transitions including decoherence and quantum Darwinism, and non-equilibrium dynamics concerningsymmetry breaking and the generation of defects during phase transitions (known as the Kibble-Zurek mechanism).Additionally, he made contributions to quantum information theory, particularly in formulating the no-cloning theo-rem (with Wootters).

Followed by Talks by Local LANL Scientists:

  • 11:15 - 11:40 Tanmoy Biswas, Catalytic Enhancement in the Performance of the Microscopic Two-Stroke Heat Engine
  • 11:40 - 12:05 Francesco Caravelli, Honey, I Shrunk the Heat Uncertainty Relationship!
  • 12:05 - 12:30 Luis Pedro GarcĂ­a-Pintos, Resilience-Runtime Tradeoff Relations in Quantum Algorithms