Related papers: Gravitational waves, diffusion and decoherence
The quite different behaviors exhibited by microscopic and macroscopic systems with respect to quantum interferences suggest the existence of a borderline beyond which quantum systems loose their coherences and can be described classically.…
Real world quantum systems are open to perpetual influence from the wider environment. Quantum gravitational fluctuations provide a most fundamental source of the environmental influence through their universal interactions with all forms…
One of the biggest unsolved problems in physics is the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity. The lack of experimental guidance has made the issue extremely evasive, though various attempts have been made to relate the…
Schemes of gravitationally induced decoherence are being actively investigated as possible mechanisms for the quantum-to-classical transition. Here, we introduce a decoherence process due to quantum gravity effects. We assume a foamy…
The effects of fluctuating boundaries on a superposition state of a quantum particle in a box is studied. We consider a model in one space dimension in which the initial state is a coherent superposition of two energy eigenstates. The…
Effects of the quantum gravity under Minkowski space-time background are considered. It is shown that despite the absence of the complete theory of quantum gravity, some concrete predictions could be made for the influence of the quantum…
One of the biggest problems faced by those attempting to combine quantum theory and general relativity is the experimental inaccessibility of the unification scale. In this paper we show how incoherent conformal waves in the gravitational…
Stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves are intrinsic fluctuations of spacetime which lead to an unavoidable decoherence mechanism. This mechanism manifests itself as a degradation of the contrast of quantum interferences. It defines…
Recent experimental results point to the existence of coherent quantum phenomena in systems made of a large number of particles, despite the fact that for many-body systems the presence of decoherence is hardly negligible and emerging…
We discuss effects of loss of coherence in low energy quantum systems caused by or related to gravitation, referred to as gravitational decoherence. These effects, resulting from random metric fluctuations, for instance, promise to be…
The (large-scale) structures we observe in the Universe are classical, but within the inflationary scenario they do originate from quantum fluctuations. This leads to the question: ''How did this quantum-to-classical transition occur?''. A…
We consider two interacting systems when one is treated classically while the other system remains quantum. Consistent dynamics of this coupling has been shown to exist, and explored in the context of treating space-time classically. Here,…
All existing experimental results are currently interpreted using classical geometry. However, there are theoretical reasons to suspect that at a deeper level, geometry emerges as an approximate macroscopic behavior of a quantum system at…
We investigate the meaning of gravity-induced decoherence in quantum theory, known as `intrinsic' or `fundamental' decoherence in the literature. We explore a range of issues relevant to this problem, including the meaning of modified…
We discuss how a background bath of gravitons can induce decoherence of quantum systems. The mechanism is dephasing, the loss of phase coherence due to quantum geometry fluctuations caused by the gravitons. This effect is illustrated in a…
We develop a general framework for the open dynamics of an ensemble of quantum particles subject to spacetime fluctuations about the flat background. An arbitrary number of interacting bosonic and fermionic particles are considered. A…
Any quantum system interacting with a complex environment undergoes decoherence. Empty space is filled with vacuum energy due to matter fields in their ground state and represents an underlying environment that any quantum particle has to…
The quantum nature of gravity remains an open question in fundamental physics, lacking experimental verification. Gravitational waves (GWs) provide a potential avenue for detecting gravitons, the hypothetical quantum carriers of gravity.…
Harmonizing classical and quantum worlds is a major challenge for modern physics. A significant portion of the scientific community supports the notion that classical mechanics is an effective theory that arises from quantum mechanics.…
In papers on primary state diffusion (Percival 1994, 1995), numerical estimates suggested that fluctuations in the space-time metric on the scale of the Planck time (10^-44s) could be detected using atom interferometers. In this paper we…