On the Concept of Entropy for Quantum Decaying Systems

Abstract

The classical concept of entropy was successfully extended to quantum mechanics by the introduction of the density operator formalism. However, further extensions to quantum decaying states have been hampered by conceptual difficulties associated to the particular nature of these states. In this work we address this problem, by (i) pointing out the difficulties that appear when one tries a consistent definition for this entropy, and (ii) building up a plausible formalism for it, which is based on the use of coherent complex states in the context of a path integration.