Related papers: Gravitational time dilation induced decoherence du…
The physics of low-energy quantum systems is usually studied without explicit consideration of the background spacetime. Phenomena inherent to quantum theory on curved space-time, such as Hawking radiation, are typically assumed to be only…
According to relativity, the reading of an ideal clock is interpreted as the elapsed proper time along its classical trajectory through spacetime. In contrast, quantum theory allows the association of many simultaneous trajectories with a…
Understanding the interplay between quantum mechanical systems and gravity is a crucial step towards unifying these two fundamental ideas. Recent theoretical developments have explored how global properties of spacetime would cause a…
There has been considerable interest over the past years in investigating the role of gravity in quantum phenomenon such as entanglement and decoherence. In particular, gravitational time dilation is believed to decohere superpositions of…
Recently, a static gravitational field, such as that of the Earth, was proposed as a new source of decoherence [1]. We study the conditions under which it becomes the dominant decoherence effect in typical interferometric experiments. The…
We present a simple calculation leading to the quantum gravitationally-induced decoherence of a spatial superposition of a massive object in the linear coupling regime. The point of this calculation is to illustrate that the…
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…
Quantum time dilation occurs when a clock moves in a superposition of relativistic momentum wave packets. We utilize the lifetime of an excited hydrogen-like atom as a clock to demonstrate how quantum time dilation manifests in a…
Recent work has shown that relativistic time dilation results in correlations between a particle's internal and external degrees of freedom, leading to decoherence of the latter. In this note, we briefly summarize the results and address…
The decoherence effect due to emission of gravitons is examined. It shows the same qualitative features of the QED effect which has already been investigated, it is obviously much weaker, wholly universal and shows a stronger energy…
The fact that gravitational environments cannot be shielded (since gravity is universal) makes them of great theoretical interest to decoherence mechanisms and to the quantum-to-classical transition. While past results seemed to indicate…
Using the relativistic concept of time dilation we show that a superposition of gravitational potentials can lead to nonunitary time evolution. For sufficiently weak gravitational potentials one can still define, for all intents and…
A proper time observable for a quantum clock is introduced and it is found that the proper time read by one clock conditioned on another clock reading a different proper time obeys classical time dilation in accordance with special…
It has recently been proposed that quantum gravity might lead to the decoherence of superpositions in energy, corresponding to a discretization of time at the Planck scale. At first sight the proposal seems amenable to experimental…
Decoherence is the process via which quantum superpositions states are reduced to classical mixtures. Decoherence has been predicted for relativistically accelerated quantum systems, however examples to date have involved restricting the…
A small quantum system within the gravitational field of a massive body will be entangled with the quantum degrees of freedom of the latter. Hence, the massive body acts as an environment, and it induces non-unitary dynamics, noise, and…
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…
We study the decoherence effect of quantum superposition in de Sitter (dS) spacetime due to the presence of the cosmological horizon. Using the algebraic approach of quantum field theory on curved spacetime, we derive the precise expression…
We consider the possibility to measure the quantum decoherence using gravitational wave interferometers. Gravitational wave interferometers create the superposition state of photons and measure the interference of the photon state. If the…
It is univocally anticipated that in a theory of quantum gravity, there exist quantum superpositions of semiclassical states of spacetime geometry. Such states could arise for example, from a source mass in a superposition of spatial…