Issue |
Europhys. Lett.
Volume 57, Number 5, March 2002
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 632 - 638 | |
Section | General | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/epl/i2002-00509-0 | |
Published online | 01 September 2002 |
Persistence of exponential decay for metastable quantum states at long times
Department of Physics, Dartmouth College - Hanover,
NH 03755, USA
Received:
8
May
2001
Accepted:
12
December
2001
Quantum dynamics predicts that a metastable state should decay exponentially except at very early and very late times. We show through an exactly soluble model that if the decay products can interact weakly with their environment, then the exponential decay regime is prolonged to later times, while the exponential decay constant itself remains essentially unaffected. As the number of environmental degrees of freedom is increased, the asymptotic late-time decay follows higher powers of 1/t and the exponential decay regime is extended without limit.
PACS: 03.65.Ta – Foundations of quantum mechanics; measurement theory / 03.65.Nk – Scattering theory / 03.65.Xp – Tunneling, traversal time, quantum Zeno dynamics
© EDP Sciences, 2002
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.