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SUMMARY:Evolution of Gaussian wave packets in the presence of losses and g
 ains - Dr. Eva-Maria Graefe\, Imperial College London
DTSTART:20171030T153000Z
DTEND:20171030T170000Z
UID:TALK94183@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Ulrich Schneider
DESCRIPTION:In recent years there has been growing interest in open quantu
 m systems described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians in various fields. Examp
 les are scattering systems and the effective description of absorption and
  amplification. The classical counterparts of non-Hermitian quantum system
 s\, however\, remained illusive. In this talk I present results on the qua
 ntum evolution of Gaussian wave packets generated by a non-Hermitian Hamil
 tonian in the semiclassical limit of small hbar. This yields a generalisat
 ion of the Ehrenfest theorem for the dynamics of observable expectation va
 lues. The resulting equations of motion for dynamical variables are couple
 d to an equation of motion for the phase-space metric - a phenomenon havin
 g no analogue in Hermitian theories. The insight that can be gained by thi
 s classical description will be demonstrated for a number of example syste
 ms.
LOCATION:Ryle Seminar Room (930) 
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