Classical Limit of the Quantum Zeno Effect by Environmental Decoherence

D. J. Bedingham, J. J. Halliwell

Published 2014-02-18Version 1

We consider a point particle in one dimension initially confined to a finite spatial region whose state is frequently monitored by projection operators onto that region. In the limit of infinitely frequent monitoring, the state never escapes from the region -- this is the Zeno effect. The aim of this paper is to show how the Zeno effect disappears in the classical limit in this and similar examples. We give a general argument showing that the Zeno effect is suppressed in the presence of a decoherence mechanism which kills interference between histories. We show how this works explicitly by coupling to a decohering environment. Smoothed projectors are required to give the problem proper definition and this implies the existence of a momentum cutoff. We show that the escape rate from the region approaches the classically expected result, and hence the Zeno effect is suppressed, as long as the environmentally-induced fluctuations in momentum are sufficiently large and we establish the associated timescale. We link our results to earlier work on the hbar -->0 limit of the Zeno effect. We illustrate our results by plotting the probability flux lines for the density matrix (which are equivalent to Bohm trajectories in the pure state case). These illustrate both the Zeno and anti-Zeno effects very clearly, and their suppression. Our results are closely related to our earlier paper demonstrating the suppression of quantum-mechanical reflection by decoherence