From: sarfatti@well.sf.ca.us (Jack Sarfatti)
Subject: QUANTUM KITTENS
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 04:47:33 GMT


On Quantum Kitty Cats, Zeh writes: "As soon as the states of the
environment have approximately become mutually orthogonal by a sufficiently
large number of collisions ... The relative phases characterizing the
superposition of different [macroscopic] values ... are therefore
irreversibly 'delocalized' (it decoheres locally) if the incoming photons
(or other particles)  satisfy an appropriate Sommerfeld-type condition of
lacking conspirative correlations (Boltzmann's chaos for quantum phases).
Even if the collapse is not explicitly taken into account up to this time,
superpositions of the different macroscopic states sre no longer present at
the local system under consideration. Once this decoherence has practically
become irreversible, local observers may pretend that the macroscopic
quantities, such as the outcomes of measurements, really exist and are
mearely unknown. This is a dynamical justification of superselection rules
for macroscopic quantities, and of the otherwise quantum mechanically
unjustified concept of a physical entropy ... p.94 THE DIRECTION OF TIME
... classical concepts ... emerge ... as a dynamical consequence of their
unavoidable continuous 'measurement' by the environment, a process that
leads to the delocalization of phase relations which would define their
superpositions. Classical concepts and their histories (trajectories in
their configuration space [the starting point of classical chaos with
fractal strange attractors - Sarfatti interjection] become 'excess baggage'
from a fundamental point of view (John Hartle, 1989 UCSB preprint). If the
robust quantum variable x.. is a continuous quantity, such as the center of
mass position of a dust particle, or the orientation in space of a
macroscopic molecule, its interference will be suppressed according to a
time-dependent gaussian ...  exp[-at(x-x')^2]  4.36 where a is determined
by the rate and efficiency of the scattering. (p.95).. [irreversible]
decoherence competes with the [reversible] dispersion of the wave
packet....even the rate of scattering of photons or hydrogen atoms which
are present in 'empty' intergalactic space would be sufficient to
overcompensate the coherent spreading of initially narrow center-of-mass
wave packets for small dust particles or mediun-sized molecules. This
decoherence acts on a much faster time scale than thermal relaxation
(Zurek, 1986). [The decoherence Gaussian] corresponds to the infinite-mass
limit of quantum Brownian motion [what about quantum pink and black motion?
Sarfatti].. this effect is not due to a stochastic ... 'kicking' or
'chopping' (p.96) .. Remarkably, it is precisely the form as the non-
unitary dynamics that has been postulated .. in order to describe von
Neumann's collapse of the wave function.

...no interference fringes could ever be observed in the case of
diffraction experiments with macroscopic objects or large molecules - even
if the experimentally achievable resolution permitted it. [this feature is
also found in my superluminal connection communication gedanken exeriment
where there is never any first order coherence (local fringes) at the
transmitter interferograms because of the nonlocal correlations of the
transmitter photon(s) to orthogonal states of the twin receiver photon (s)
- even though uncorrelated light with same local power spectrum would show
fringes. The receiver photon is the analog of the "environmental" degrees
of freedom. The transmitter phase information from the variable phase plate
does not manifest locally at the transmitter but does manifest locally at
the receiver as a shift in the relative counting rates of the two receiver
counters (there is only one transimitter counter coherently inputing each
of the two interferogram outputs from the unitary transmitter beam
recombiner to get the effect at the far away receiver- Sarfatti comment] ..
the information about the delocalized (though still existing) relative
phases vanishes ... the additive (local) entropy monotonically increases as
a result of this continuous measurement (without reading the result). In
particular, the 'classical' realization of a bit of information in a
quantum computer cause by such interaction with the environment would have
to produce an amount of entropy of the order of just the conjectured
minimum kln2 ... the genetic code lll utilizes molecular degrees of freedom
which are classical in this sense . As a consequence of Zeon's quantum
paradox (or the watchdog effect), this seems to also increase their
stability (p.96) .. this effect is not caused by the collapse of the
wavefunction .. but requires merely the entanglement with the
environment... only for discrete states of sufficiently low density-
otherwise the entanglement merely justifies the neglect of phases in the
derivation of master equations.

[Reversibility without reversibility? _Sarfatti variation on a theme by
Wheeler] It is further remarkable that the classical phenomena described by
Newtonian mechanics - which in the absence of frictional forces.are usually
considered as reversible - paradoxically arise in this quantum mechanical
description from the continuous irreversible decoherence (somewhat
remiiscent of the dissipative structures appearing in non-equilibrium
processes). While the entropy produced thereby is completely negligible on
a macroscopic scale, it is very large in units of kln2. ... a quantum demon
would have to decohere the world (p.97)...
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