Gamow vectors formalism applied to the Loschmidt echo

Gamow vectors have been developed in order to give a mathematical description for quantum decay phenomena. Mainly, they have been applied to radioactive phenomena, scattering and to some decoherence models. They play a crucial role in the description of quantum irreversible processes and in the formulation of time asymmetry in quantum mechanics. In this paper, we use this formalism to describe a well-known phenomenon of irreversibility: the Loschmidt echo. The standard approach considers that the irreversibility of this phenomenon is the result of an additional term in the backward Hamiltonian. Here, we use the non-Hermitian formalism, where the time evolution is non-unitary. Additionally, we compare the characteristic decay times of this phenomenon with the decoherence ones. We conclude that the Loschmidt echo and the decoherence can be considered as two aspects of the same phenomenon and that there is a mathematical relationship between their corresponding characteristic times.Fil: Fortin, Sebastian Ezequiel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gadella, M.. Universidad de Valladolid; EspañaFil: Holik, Federico Hernán. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Losada, Marcelo Adrián. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba; Argentin