Quantum decoherence
Decoherencia cuántica
- Date
- 1970 · confidence high
- Place
- Heidelberg, Germany
- Credited to
- H. Dieter Zeh
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
German physicist Zeh, at the University of Heidelberg, proposed that a quantum system's interaction with its environment eliminates interference effects, explaining why the macroscopic world appears classical without needing a special wavefunction collapse.
Zeh's work remained fairly neglected until Wojciech Zurek revitalized the field in the early 1980s.
What it led to
- Physical explanation of the quantum-to-classical transition
- Renewed interest in quantum mechanics interpretation in the 1980s (Wojciech Zurek)
- Applications in quantum computing to understand loss of coherence