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The question say it all.

For example is it the mass of the system? The amount of energy? The species of atom? The electric charge?

Anton
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  • Apologies, but the title does not say it all for me. Can you elaborate? – garyp Jan 25 '16 at 20:06
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    The answer is "it depends". What system are you even thinking about? In particular what is the nature of the states that will be decohering, are they position states, internal atomic states... ? – Mark Mitchison Jan 25 '16 at 20:11
  • The comments clearly point out the holes in my understanding. Does the following question make sense: if we are comparing two systems, one - a single atom of carbon - and another - a single atom of hydrogen - can we expect one to decohere faster than the other on average? – Anton Jan 25 '16 at 20:20
  • @MarkMitchison as for which states will be decohering, positional or internal atomic or something else - I was under the impression, if an atom was to be left without interaction with anything, it would be in a superposition of positions, internal atomic states, everything. – Anton Jan 25 '16 at 20:23
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    The question as posed is much too broad for this format. Decoherence is not a property of the system (e.g. "a carbon atom"), it depends on the entirety of its environment and the type and strength of coupling to the different components of the environment. So, in principle, everything affects it. It's also a complete fuddle to say that an isolated atom "would be in a superposition of positions, internal atomic states, everything" - it will be in the state you left it in, and its evolution under the system's hamiltonian. – Emilio Pisanty Jan 25 '16 at 20:51
  • The notion of "being in a superposition" is meaningless by itself unless you specify exactly which states are being superposed. The hydrogen ground state is a superposition of a continuum of position eigenstates, and each of those is a superposition of a bunch of angular momentum eigenstates, and so on and so forth. – Emilio Pisanty Jan 25 '16 at 20:53
  • @EmilioPisanty clearly there is a huge gap in my understanding of what a superposition truly is (beyond the popular physics explanations). Would you recommend some resources or books to fill that gap? – Anton Jan 25 '16 at 21:15
  • Without knowing your background, I can do little beyond referring you to this thread. – Emilio Pisanty Jan 25 '16 at 21:20
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Anton Jan 25 '16 at 22:22

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