Related papers: Decoherence of massive superpositions induced by c…
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…
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…
We investigate decoherence of quantum superpositions induced by gravitational time dilation and spontaneous emission between two atomic levels. It has been shown that gravitational time dilation can be an universal decoherence source. Here,…
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…
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…
We show that if a massive body is put in a quantum superposition of spatially separated states, the mere presence of a black hole in the vicinity of the body will eventually destroy the coherence of the superposition. This occurs because,…
Despite the fact that we have some proposals for the quantum theory of gravity like string theory or loop quantum gravity, we do not have any experimental evidence supporting any of these theories. Actually, we do not have experimental…
We analyse a decoherence effect, caused by the gravitational interaction between a massive body and the electromagnetic field. Assuming a quantum version of the light bending interaction, we show that it leads to decoherence of the mass if…
Hypothetical models have been proposed in which explicit collapse mechanisms prevent the superposition principle to hold at large scales. In particular, the model introduced by Ellis and co-workers [Phys. Lett. B ${\bf 221}$, 113 (1989)]…
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…
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…
One of the outstanding questions in modern physics is how to test whether gravity is classical or quantum in a laboratory. Recently there has been a proposal to test the quantum nature of gravity by creating quantum superpositions of two…
Adopting the viewpoint that the standard perturbative quantization of general relativity provides an effective description of quantum gravity that is valid at ordinary energies, we show that gravity as an environment induces the rapid…
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…
What gravitational field is generated by a massive quantum system in a spatial superposition? Despite decades of intensive theoretical and experimental research, we still do not know the answer. On the experimental side, the difficulty lies…
We consider a composite particle, whose internal degrees of freedom are described by quantum mechanics, interacting with the quantum gravitational field in the linear approximation. Dechorence induced by the quantum fluctuations of the…
We analyze the dynamics of a gravity-induced entanglement for N massive particles. Considering the linear configuration of these particles, we investigate the entanglement between a specific pair of particles under the influence of the…
It is argued that gravity should cause a breakdown of quantum mechanics, at low energies, accessible to table-top experiments. It is then shown that one can formulate a theory of quantum gravity in which gravitational correlations exist…
It is believed that classical behavior emerges in a quantum system due to decoherence. It has also been proposed that gravity can be a source of this decoherence. We examine this in detail by studying a number of quantum systems, including…
It is now widely believed that if the gravitational field is (perturbatively) quantum, it would entangle two massive objects (in spatial superpositions) which were otherwise unentangled to begin with. Recently, actual table-top experiments…