Eur. Phys. J. D 17, 85-92 (2001)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100530170041

Localization of a macroscopic object induced by the factorization of internal adiabatic motion

¹ Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, P.R. China
² Department of Mathematics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a suncp@itp.ac.cn

Received: 24 October 2000
Revised: 8 March 2001
Published online: 15 October 2001

Abstract

To account for the phenomenon of quantum decoherence of a macroscopic object, such as the localization and disappearance of interference, we invoke the adiabatic quantum entanglement between its collective states (such as that of the center-of-mass (CM)) and its inner states based on our recent investigation. Under the adiabatic limit where motion of the CM does not excite the transition of inner states, it is shown that the wave function of the macroscopic object can be written as an entangled state with correlation between adiabatic inner states and quasi-classical motion configurations of the CM. Since the adiabatic inner states are factorized with respect to each component of the macroscopic object, this adiabatic separation can induce the quantum decoherence. This observation thus provides us with a possible solution to the Schrdinger cat paradox.