[Thor]

New evidence for quantum Darwinism found in quantum dots




These images show a recurring scar found in simulations that bears a strong resemblance to experimental images. Scars were found to replicate and produce offspring states in agreement with quantum Darwinism. Image credit: A.M. Burke, et al. ©2010 APS.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists have found new evidence that supports the theory of quantum Darwinism, the idea that the transition from the quantum to the classical world occurs due to a quantum form of natural selection. By explaining how the classical world emerges from the quantum world, quantum Darwinism could shed light on one of the most challenging questions in physics of the past century.

The basis of almost any theoretical quantum-to-classical transition lies in the concept of decoherence. In the quantum world, many possible quantum states “collapse” into a single state due to interactions with the environment. To quantum Darwinists, decoherence is a selection process, and the final, stable state is called a “pointer state.” Although pointer states are quantum states, they are “fit enough” to be transmitted through the environment without collapsing and can then make copies of themselves that can be observed on the macroscopic scale. Although everything in our world is quantum at its core, our classical view of the universe is ultimately determined by these pointer states.
Since quantum Darwinism was first proposed in 2003 by Wojciech Zurek of Los Alamos National Laboratory, several studies have found evidence to support the idea. Most recently, a team of physicists and engineers from Arizona State University and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., has performed experiments using scanning gate microscopy to image scar structures in an open quantum dot. Their results have revealed the existence of periodic scar offspring states that evolve and eventually contribute to a robust state, much in the way that the derivation of pointer states is predicted by quantum Darwinism.

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