Related papers: Relativity and decoherence of spacetime superposit…
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…
Decoherence may not solve all of the measurement problems of quantum mechanics. It is proposed that a solution to these problems may be to allow that superpositions describe physically real systems in the following sense. Each quantum…
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…
Within any anticipated unifying theory of quantum gravity, it should be meaningful to combine the fundamental notions of quantum superposition and spacetime to obtain so-called "spacetime superpositions": that is, quantum superpositions of…
One of the main technical obstacles in constructing a consistent theory of quantum gravity is that the metric itself defines the causal structure required for quantization. This motivates implementing quantum aspects of gravity through an…
We argue that semiclassical gravity can be made consistent if quantum systems source gravity only when they participate in non-gravitational interactions that lead to environment-induced decoherence. Outside such decoherence-based events,…
Superpositions of black holes can be described geometrically using a combined canonical formulation for space-time and quantum states. A previously introduced black-hole model that includes quantum fluctuations of metric components is shown…
In modern physics only relative quantities are considered to have physical significance. For example, position assigned to a system depends on the choice of coordinates, and only relative distances between different systems have physical…
What gravitational field is generated by a massive quantum system in a spatial superposition? This is one of the most important questions in modern physics, and after decades of intensive theoretical and experimental research, we still do…
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…
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 underlying dynamical structure for both relativity and quantum theory-``superrelativity'' has been proposed in order to overcome the well known incompatibility between these theories. The relationship between curvature of spacetime…
We address the issue of recovering the time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation from quantum gravity in a natural way. To reach this aim it is necessary to understand the nonoccurrence of certain superpositions in quantum gravity. We explore…
In this note, we attempt to provide some insights into the structure of non-perturbative descriptions of quantum gravity using known examples of gauge-theory / gravity duality. We argue that in familiar examples, a quantum description of…
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…
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…
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…
Experiments have recently been proposed testing whether quantum gravitational interactions generate entanglement between adjacent masses in position superposition states. We propose potentially less challenging experiments that test quantum…
We give a first principles derivation of a master equation for the evolution of a quantum matter field in a linearly perturbed Minkowski spacetime, based solely on quantum field theory and general relativity. We make no additional…
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…