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Title: Amplification, Decoherence and the Acquisition of Information by Spin Environments

Journal Article · · Scientific Reports
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/srep25277 · OSTI ID:1624831
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States). Dept. of Physics
  2. Perimeter Inst. for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, ON (Canada); IBM Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY (United States)
  3. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States). Theoretical Division

Quantum Darwinism recognizes the role of the environment as a communication channel: Decoherence can selectively amplify information about the pointer states of a system of interest (preventing access to complementary information about their superpositions) and can make records of this information accessible to many observers. This redundancy explains the emergence of objective, classical reality in our quantum Universe. Here, we demonstrate that the amplification of information in realistic spin environments can be quantified by the quantum Chernoff information, which characterizes the distinguishability of partial records in individual environment subsystems. We show that, except for a set of initial states of measure zero, the environment always acquires redundant information. Moreover, the Chernoff information captures the rich behavior of amplification in both finite and infinite spin environments, from quadratic growth of the redundancy to oscillatory behavior. These results will considerably simplify experimental testing of quantum Darwinism, e.g., using nitrogen vacancies in diamond.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities Division
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1624831
Journal Information:
Scientific Reports, Vol. 6, Issue 1; ISSN 2045-2322
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (14)

Revealing the Emergence of Classicality Using Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers journal October 2019
Role of information backflow in the emergence of quantum Darwinism journal July 2019
Collisional unfolding of quantum Darwinism journal April 2019
System information propagation for composite structures journal August 2018
Objectivity (or lack thereof): Comparison between predictions of quantum Darwinism and spectrum broadcast structure journal September 2018
Redundancy of einselected information in quantum Darwinism: The irrelevance of irrelevant environment bits journal March 2017
Redundancy of einselected information in quantum Darwinism: The irrelevance of irrelevant environment bits text January 2017
Strong Quantum Darwinism and Strong Independence is equivalent to Spectrum Broadcast Structure text January 2018
Demonstration of entanglement assisted invariance on IBM's Quantum Experience text January 2016
System information propagation for spin structures text January 2017
Collisional unfolding of quantum Darwinism text January 2019
Quantum Decoherence text January 2019
Experimental quantum decoherence control by dark states of the environment text January 2020
Quantum Theory of the Classical: Einselection, Envariance, Quantum Darwinism and Extantons text January 2022

Figures / Tables (5)