Investigation of a quantum mechanical detector model for moving, spread-out particles

Hegerfeldt, Gerhard C.; Neumann, Jens Timo; Schulman, Lawrence S.

Investigation of a quantum mechanical detector model for moving, spread-out particles

Authors

Hegerfeldt, Gerhard C.

Neumann, Jens Timo

Schulman, Lawrence S.

Description

We investigate a fully quantum mechanical spin model for the detection of a moving particle. This model, developed in earlier work, is based on a collection of spins at fixed locations and in a metastable state, with the particle locally enhancing the coupling of the spins to an environment of bosons. Appearance of bosons from particular spins signals the presence of the particle at the spin location, and the first boson indicates its arrival. The original model used discrete boson modes. Here we treat the continuum limit, under the assumption of the Markov property, and calculate the arrival-time distribution for a particle to reach a specific region.
19 pages, 1 figure; minor changes, references corrected; accepted for publication in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General