This paper is motivated by the suggestion [W. Zurek, Physica Scripta, T76, 186 (1998)] that the chaotic tumbling of the satellite Hyperion would become non-classical within 20 years, but for the effects of environmental decoherence. The dynamics of quantum and classical probability distributions are compared for a satellite rotating perpendicular to its orbital plane, driven by the gravitational gradient. The model is studied with and without environmental decoherence. Without decoherence, the maximum quantum-classical (QC) differences in its average angular momentum scale as hbar^{2\/3} for chaotic states, and as hbar^2 for non-chaotic states, leading to negligible QC differences for a macroscopic object like Hyperion. The quantum probability distributions do not approach their classical limit smoothly, having an extremely fine oscillatory structure superimposed on the smooth classical background. For a macroscopic object, this oscillatory structure is too fine to be resolved by any realistic measurement. Either a small amount of smoothing (due to the finite resolution of the apparatus) or a very small amount of environmental decoherence is sufficient ensure the classical limit. Under decoherence, the QC differences in the probability distributions scale as (hbar^2\/D)^{1\/6}, where D is the momentum diffusion parameter. We conclude that decoherence is not essential to explain the classical behavior of macroscopic bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This paper is motivated by the suggestion [W. Zurek, Physica Scripta, T76, 186 (1998)] that the chaotic tumbling of the satellite Hyperion would become non-classical within 20 years, but for the effects of environmental decoherence. The dynamics of quantum and classical probability distributions are compared for a satellite rotating perpendicular to its orbital plane, driven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[243138],"msr-publication-type":[193715],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-166291","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-quantum","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"APS","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2005-01-01","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"022109","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"Physical Review A","msr_volume":"72","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"2","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/quant-ph\/0503170","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/quant-ph\/0503170","viewUrl":false,"id":false,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/quant-ph\/0503170"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"nawiebe","user_id":33064,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=nawiebe"},{"type":"text","value":"L.E. 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