Related papers: Self gravity affects quantum states
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…
Inspired by an ontic view of the wavefunction in quantum mechanics and motivated by the universal interaction of gravity, we discuss a possible gravity implication in the state collapse mechanism. Concretely, we investigate the stability 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,…
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…
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…
We investigate the interplay between gravity and the quantum coherence present in the state of a pulse of light propagating in curved spacetime. We first introduce an operational way to distinguish between the overall shift in the pulse…
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…
A small quantum system is studied which is a superposition of states localized in different positions in a static gravitational field. The time evolution of the correlation between different positions is investigated, and it is seen that…
We emphasize that a specific aspect of quantum gravity is the absence of a super-selection rule that prevents a linear superposition of different gravitational charges. As an immediate consequence, we obtain a tiny, but observable,…
The gravitational interaction is generally considered to be too weak to be easily submitted to systematic experimental investigation in the quantum, microscopic, domain. In this paper we attempt to remedy this situation by considering the…
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…
General relativity describes the gravitational field geometrically and in a self-interacting way because it couples to all forms of energy, including its own. Both features make finding a quantum theory difficult, yet it is important in the…
Generic self-gravitating quantum solutions that are not critically dependent on the specifics of microscopic interactions are presented. The solutions incorporate curvature effects, are consistent with the universality of gravity, and have…
We investigate a scenario where quantum correlations affect the gravitational field. We show that quantum correlations between particles occupying different positions have an effect on the gravitational field. We find that the small…
We review experiments and theoretical models about the possible mutual interplay between the gravitational field and materials in the superconducting state or other macroscopic quantum states. More generally, we focus on the possibility for…
The spurious interaction of quantum systems with their environment known as decoherence leads, as a function of time, to a decay of coherence of superposition states. Since the interactions between system and environment are local, they can…
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…
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…
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…
General relativity promotes space-time to a physical, dynamical object subject to equations of motion. Quantum gravity, accordingly, must provide a quantum framework for space-time, applicable on the smallest distance scales. Just like…