Characterization of macroscopic reversibility criteria for coarse-grained descriptions

Seminar author:Isadora Veeren

Event date and time:02/17/2022 04:00:pm

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For a quantum system at time t, once we know the relevant Hamiltonian we can (at least in principle) find out what will be the new state after some time has passed. Given a unitary microscopic evolution, the time-reversal symmetry of Schrödinger’s equation assures reversibility on a quantum level, meaning we can go back to our initial state. Even though, as far as we understand, the description of macroscopic systems should be derived from quantum fundamentals, it is known, however, that macroscopic evolutions are in general not reversible.

The goal of this ongoing project is to investigate how this transition from a micro- to a macroscopic description influences the reversibility of an evolution, and to determine the conditions under which the effective dynamics, given by a coarse-grained description, will be reversible. We particularly explore the case of a coarse-grained model for a blurred and saturated detector, and establish different classes of macroscopic reversibility, each being defined by distinct conditions on the CG map and the microscopic evolution.