Preferred states of the apparatus

Abstract

A simple one dimensional model for the system-apparatus interaction is analyzed. The system is a spin-1/2 particle, and its position and momentum degrees constitutes the apparatus. An analysis involving only unitary Schrodinger dynamics illustrates the nature of the correlations established in the system-apparatus entangled state. It is shown that even in the absence of any environment-induced decoherence, or any other measurement model, certain initial states of the apparatus - like localized Gaussian wavepackets - are preferred over others, in terms of the establishment of measurementlike one-to-one correlations in the pure system-apparatus entangled state.