Semiclassical description of diffraction and its quenching by the forward-backward vversion of the inital value representation

摘要

It is shown that the forward-backward (FB) version of the semiclassical (SC) initial value representation (IVR) is able to describe quantum interference/coherence (i.e., diffraction) of particles transmitted by a two-slit potential. (In contrast, the linearized approximation to the SC-IVR,which leads to the classical Wigner model, is unable to do so.)FB-IVR calcualtions are also used to describe the (partial) quenching of this interference structure (i.e.,"de-coherence")when the two-slit potential is coupled to a bath of harmonic oscillators.