Related papers: Loss of quantum coherence through scattering off v…
In a quantum theory of gravity, fluctuations about the vacuum may be considered as Planck scale virtual black holes appearing and annihilating in pairs. Incident fields scattering from such fluctuations would lose quantum coherence. In a…
We study scattering on the black hole horizon in a partial wave basis, with an impact parameter of the order of the Schwarzschild radius or less. This resembles the strong gravity regime where quantum gravitational effects appear. The…
The formation and evaporation of two dimensional black holes are discussed. It is shown that if the radiation in minimal scalars has positive energy, there must be a global event horizon or a naked singularity. The former would imply loss…
One would expect spacetime to have a foam-like structure on the Planck scale with a very high topology. If spacetime is simply connected (which is assumed in this paper), the non-trivial homology occurs in dimension two, and spacetime can…
The interaction of a particle with vacuum fluctuations--which theoretically exist even in the complete absence of matter--can lead to observable irreversible decoherence if it were possible to switch on and off the particle charge suddenly.…
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…
We consider a quantum harmonic oscillator coupled with a graviton bath and discuss the loss of coherence in the matter sector due to the matter-graviton vertex interaction. Working in the quantum-field-theory framework, we obtain a master…
We study how the effects of quantum corrections lead to notions of irreversibility and clustering in quantum field theory. In particular, we consider the virtual ``charge" distribution generated by quantum corrections and adopt for it a…
We analyze a system consisting of an oscillator coupled to a field. With the field traced out as an environment, the oscillator loses coherence on a very short {\it decoherence timescale}; but, on a much longer {\it relaxation timescale},…
Quantum field theory provides us with the means to calculate scattering amplitudes. In recent years a dramatic new development has lead to great simplification of such calculations. This is based on the discovery of the``amplituhedron'' in…
I reconsider Hawking's analysis of the effects of gravitational collapse on quantum fields, taking into account interactions between the fields. The ultra-high energy vacuum fluctuations, which had been considered to be an awkward…
We study the decoherence induced by near-extremal charged black holes on quantum systems in their exterior. Specifically, we analyze a thought experiment recently discussed in the literature, where the quantum system is a charged particle…
Quantum fluctuations on curved spacetimes cause the emission of pairs of particles from the quantum vacuum, as in the Hawking effect from black holes. We use an optical analogue to gravity to investigate the influence of the curvature on…
Recently, it has been shown that a quantum system held in spatial superposition and then eventually recombined does experience decoherence from black hole horizons, at a level increasing linearly with the time the superposition has been…
Various calculations of the $S$ matrix have shown that it seems to be non unitary for interacting fields when there are closed timelike curves. It is argued that this is because there is loss of quantum coherence caused by the fact that…
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…
Quantum field theory in a semiclassical background can be derived as an approximation to quantum gravity from a weak-coupling expansion in the inverse Planck mass. Such an expansion is studied for evolution on "nice-slices" in the spacetime…
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…
Quantum coherence as the fundamental characteristic of quantum physics, provides the valuable resource for quantum computation in exceeding the power of classical algorithms. The exploration of quantum coherence in relativistic systems is…
The existence of irreducible field fluctuations in vacuum is an important prediction of quantum theory. These fluctuations have many observable consequences, like the Casimir effect which is now measured with good accuracy and agreement…