Decoherence Effects Break Reciprocity in Matter Transport

Understand

The decoherence of quantum states defines the transition between the quantum world and classical physics.

• Decoherence or, analogously, quantum mechanical collapse events pose fundamental questions regarding the interpretation of quantum mechanics and are technologically relevant because they limit the coherent information processing performed by quantum computers.
• We have discovered that the transition regime enables a novel type of matter transport.
• Applying this discovery, we present nanoscale devices in which decoherence, modeled by random quantum jumps, produces fundamentally novel phenomena by interrupting the unitary dynamics of electron wave packets.