Related papers: Gravitational Decoherence: A Thematic Overview
The synthesis of quantum and gravitational physics is sought through a finite, realistic, locally causal theory where gravity plays a vital role not only during decoherent measurement but also during non-decoherent unitary evolution.…
The search for a consistent and empirically established quantum theory of gravity is among the biggest open problems of fundamental physics. The obstacles are of formal and of conceptual nature. Here, I address the main conceptual problems,…
Classical gravity coupled to a CFT$_4$ (matter) is considered. The effect of the quantum dynamics of matter on gravity is studied around maximally symmetric spaces (flat, de Sitter and Anti de Sitter). The structure of the graviton…
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…
Generalized uncertainty principles are able to serve as useful descriptions of some of the phenomenology of quantum gravity effects, providing an intuitive grasp on non-trivial space-time structures such as a fundamental discreteness of…
We study the effect of the scattering of gravitational waves on planetary motions, say the motion of the Moon around the Earth. Though this effect has a negligible influence on dissipation, it dominates fluctuations and the associated…
Quantum gravity places entirely new challenges on the formulation of a consistent theory as well as on an extraction of potentially observable effects. Quantum corrections due to the gravitational field are commonly expected to be tiny…
We present a general master equation for the quantum dynamics of a scalar bosonic particle interacting with an external weak and stochastic gravitational field. The dynamics predicts decoherence in position as well as in momentum. We show…
We study quantum noise and decoherence induced by gravitons. We derive a Langevin equation of geodesic deviation in the presence of gravitons. The amplitude of noise correlations tells us that large squeezing is necessary to detect the…
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…
We describe a non-perturbative approach to studying the gravitational collapse of a scalar field in spherical symmetry with quantum gravity corrections. Quantum effects are described by a phase space function that modifies the constraints…
Experiments are beginning to probe the interaction of quantum particles with gravitational fields beyond the uniform-field regime. In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the gravitational field in such experiments can be written as a…
We study the decoherence process associated with the scattering of stochastic gravitational waves. We discuss the case of macroscopic systems, such as the planetary motion of the Moon around the Earth, for which gravitational scattering is…
The question of general covariance in quantum gravity is considered in the first post-Newtonian approximation. Transformation properties of observable quantities under deformations of a reference frame, induced by variations of the gauge…
We study how self gravitation of quantum systems affects the quantum coherence present in their state. Spatial superpositions of static, large, heavy systems tend to rapidly lose coherence, whereas light or massless particles are…
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.…
Unitarity is a pillar of quantum theory. Nevertheless, it is also a source of several of its conceptual problems. We note that in a world where measurements are relational, as is the case in gravitation, quantum mechanics exhibits a…
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…
On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom.…
The effort to discover a quantum theory of gravity is motivated by the need to reconcile the incompatibility between quantum theory and general relativity. Here, we present an alternative approach by constructing a consistent theory of…