Information flow during the quantum-classical transition

We have exhaustively investigated the classical limit of the semi-classical evolution with reference to a well-known model that represents the interaction between matter and a given field. In this Letter we approach this issue by recourse to a new statistical quantifier called the symbolic transfer entropy [T. Schreiber, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (2000) 461; M. Staniek, K. Lehnertz, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100 (2008) 158101]. We encounter that the quantum-classical transition gets thereby described as the sign reversal of the dominating direction of the information flow between classical and quantal variables. This can be considered as an evidence of the physical useful of this new statistical quantifier. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.