Speaker
Mauro Paternostro
(Queen’s University Belfast)
Description
Microscopic systems (such as electrons, atoms, or faint
light fields) can be prepared, according to the principles
of quantum mechanics, in physical configurations with no
classical counterpart. Such a possibility appears to be
precluded when the degree of 'complexity' of the system at
hand (intended as its size, mass or the number of its
elementary constituents) grows towards the macroscopic
domain. Indeed, our daily observations do not readily give
us any evidence of non-classical behaviour of the
macroscopic world around us. Is there any reason preventing
the establishment of quantum features at the macroscopic
scale? And how is quantumness lost as we abandon the
microscopic domain? These questions address the phenomenon
known as quantum-to-classical transition, i.e. the process
through which quantum features are lost in favour of a fully
classical description of a physical system. The
characterization of the QtC transition is one of the most
interesting and challenging goals of modern research in
quantum mechanics. In this Colloquium I will discuss how
fundamental progress can be made towards a better grasp of
the quantum-to-classical crossover by adopting a novel
methodological approach based on the non-equilibrium
thermodynamics of quantum evolutions. Harnessing the
fundamental interplay between complexity and quantumness
will underpin the development of more resilient
architectures for quantum information processing.