Related papers: Matter-Wave Decoherence due to a Gas Environment i…
An "almost diagonal" reduced density matrix (in coordinate representation) is usually a result of environment induced decoherence and is considered the sign of classical behavior. We point out that the proton of a ground state hydrogen atom…
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.…
A two-slit interference of a massive particle in the presence of environment induced decoherence is theoretically analyzed using a fully quantum mechanical calculation. The Markovian Master equation, derived from coupling the particle to a…
Quantum decoherence refers to the phenomenon when the interaction of a quantum system with its environment results in the degradation of quantum coherence. Decoherence is considered to be the most popular mechanism responsible for the…
We discuss the various manifestations of quantum decoherence in the forms of dephasing, entanglement with the environment, and revelation of "which-path" information. As a specific example, we consider an electron interference experiment.…
Coherent backscattering is a coherence effect in the propagation of waves through disordered media involving two or more scattering events. Here, we report on the observation of coherent backscattering from individual atoms and their mirror…
Frequency shifts from background gas collisions currently contribute significantly to the inaccuracy of atomic clocks. Because nearly all collisions with room-temperature background gases that transfer momentum eject the cold atoms from the…
We discuss how a background bath of gravitons can induce decoherence of quantum systems. The mechanism is dephasing, the loss of phase coherence due to quantum geometry fluctuations caused by the gravitons. This effect is illustrated in a…
We analyze collisional decoherence of atoms or molecules prepared in a coherent superposition of nondegenerate internal states at ultralow temperatures and placed in an ultracold buffer gas. Our analysis is applicable for an arbitrary bath…
We study the decoherence process associated with the scattering of stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves. We show that it has a negligible influence on HYPER-like atomic interferometers although it may dominate decoherence of…
We derive a model to describe decoherence of atomic clouds in atom-chip traps taking the excited states of the trapping potential into account. We use this model to investigate decoherence for a single trapping well and for a pair of…
We describe an atom interferometer to study the coherence of atoms reflected from an evanescent wave mirror. The interferometer is sensitive to the loss of phase coherence induced by the defects in the mirror. The results are consistent…
Matter-wave interferometry has been largely studied in the last few years. Usually, the main problem in the analysis of the diffraction experiments is to establish the causes for the loss of coherence observed in the interference pattern.…
We present a theoretical framework to describe the effects of decoherence on matter waves in Talbot-Lau interferometry. Using a Wigner description of the stationary beam the loss of interference contrast can be calculated in closed form.…
We study the interference of C70 fullerenes in a Talbot-Lau interferometer with a large separation between the diffraction gratings. This permits the observation of recurrences of the interference contrast both as a function of the de…
Due to their high energy, hot electrons in quantum Hall edge states can be considered as single particles that have the potential to be used for quantum optics-like experiments. Unlike photons, however, electrons typically undergo…
Vibrations, electromagnetic oscillations and temperature drifts are among the main reasons for dephasing in matter-wave interferometry. Sophisticated interferometry experiments, e.g. with ions or heavy molecules, often require integration…
Working by analogy, we use the description of light fluctuations due to random collisions of the radiating atoms to figure out why the reduction of the coherence for light propagating a cosmological distance in the fluctuating background…
We study decoherence of the external degree of freedom of a tracer particle moving in a one dimensional dilute Boltzmann gas. We find that phase averaging is the dominant decoherence effect, rather than information exchange between tracer…
We discuss a fundamental effect of the interaction-induced decoherence of the electron wave function in disordered metals. In the first part of the paper we consider a simple model of a quantum particle interacting with a bath of harmonic…