Equation 6 · Decoherence: The Quiet Selection That Makes the World Look Solid
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what Joos and Zeh call the localization rate: a single number. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
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Here is what Joos and Zeh call the localization rate: a single number, with units of inverse length squared per unit time, built from the scattering cross-section of the object, the flux and momentum of whatever is doing the scattering, and nothing else [ 7 ] . Everything about how fast a given superposition dies is contained in , and is a number you can actually compute for a real object in a real environment — which is exactly what Joos and Zeh went on to do, in the paper’s Table 2, for three sizes of hypothetical “dust particle”: a large grain of radius 10^{-3} centimetres, a small grain of 10^{-5} centimetres, and a body of 10^{-6} centimetres that the paper…
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Here is what Joos and Zeh call the localization rate: a single number, with units of inverse length squared per unit time, built from the scattering cross-section of the object, the flux and momentum of whatever is doing the scattering, and nothing else [ 7 ] . Everything about how fast a given superposition dies is contained in , and is a number you can actually compute for a real object in a real environment — which is exactly what Joos and Zeh went on to do, in the paper’s Table 2, for three sizes of hypothetical “dust particle”: a large grain of radius 10^{-3} centimetres, a small grain of 10^{-5} centimetres, and a body of 10^{-6} centimetres that the paper itself labels a “large molecule” [ 7 ] :
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