{"title":"On the Classical Limit of Freely Falling Quantum Particles, Quantum Corrections and the Emergence of the Equivalence Principle","authors":"Juan A. Cañas, J. Bernal, A. Martín-Ruiz","doi":"10.3390/universe10090351","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Quantum and classical mechanics are fundamentally different theories, but the correspondence principle states that quantum particles behave classically in the appropriate limit. For high-energy periodic quantum systems, the emergence of the classical description should be understood in a distributional sense, i.e., the quantum probability density approaches the classical distribution when the former is coarse-grained. Following a simple reformulation of this limit in the Fourier space, in this paper, we investigate the macroscopic behavior of freely falling quantum particles. To illustrate how the method works and to fix some ideas, we first successfully apply it to the case of a particle in a box. Next, we show that, for a particle bouncing under the gravity field, in the limit of a high quantum number, the leading term of the quantum distribution corresponds to the exact classical distribution plus sub-leading corrections, which we interpret as quantum corrections at the macroscopic level.","PeriodicalId":48646,"journal":{"name":"Universe","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Universe","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/universe10090351","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Quantum and classical mechanics are fundamentally different theories, but the correspondence principle states that quantum particles behave classically in the appropriate limit. For high-energy periodic quantum systems, the emergence of the classical description should be understood in a distributional sense, i.e., the quantum probability density approaches the classical distribution when the former is coarse-grained. Following a simple reformulation of this limit in the Fourier space, in this paper, we investigate the macroscopic behavior of freely falling quantum particles. To illustrate how the method works and to fix some ideas, we first successfully apply it to the case of a particle in a box. Next, we show that, for a particle bouncing under the gravity field, in the limit of a high quantum number, the leading term of the quantum distribution corresponds to the exact classical distribution plus sub-leading corrections, which we interpret as quantum corrections at the macroscopic level.
UniversePhysics and Astronomy-General Physics and Astronomy
CiteScore
4.30
自引率
17.20%
发文量
562
审稿时长
24.38 days
期刊介绍:
Universe (ISSN 2218-1997) is an international peer-reviewed open access journal focused on fundamental principles in physics. It publishes reviews, research papers, communications, conference reports and short notes. Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their research results in as much detail as possible. There is no restriction on the length of the papers.