Related papers: Analysis of the loss of coherence in interferometr…
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.…
Emergent quantum technologies have led to increasing interest in decoherence - the processes that limit the appearance of quantum effects and turn them into classical phenomena. One important cause of decoherence is the interaction of a…
The coherence effects induced by external photons coupled to matter waves inside a Mach-Zehnder three-grating interferometer are analyzed. Alternatively to atom-photon entanglement scenarios, the model considered here only relies on the…
We study the loss of spatial coherence in the extended wave function of fullerenes due to collisions with background gases. From the gradual suppression of quantum interference with increasing gas pressure we are able to support…
Decoherence is the main process behind the quantum to classical transition. It is a purely quantum mechanical effect by which the system looses its ability to exhibit coherent behavior. The recent experimental observation of diffraction and…
We study C70 fullerene matter waves in a Talbot-Lau interferometer as a function of their temperature. While the ideal fringe visibility is observed at moderate molecular temperatures, we find a gradual degradation of the interference…
We present a detailed investigation of the coherence properties of beam splitters and Mach-Zehnder interferometers for guided atoms. It is demonstrated that such a setup permits coherent wave packet splitting and leads to the appearance of…
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…
To investigate the possibility that intrinsic gravitational decoherence can be theoretically demonstrated within canonical quantum gravity, we develop a model of a self-gravitating interferometer. We search for evidence in the resulting…
This chapter reviews recent experiments on matter wave interferometry with large molecules. Starting from an elementary introduction to matter wave physics we discuss far-field diffraction and near-field interferometry with thermally…
Quantum physics rules the dynamics of small objects as they interact over microscopic length scales. Nevertheless, quantum correlations involving macroscopic distances can be observed between entangled photons as well as in atomic gases and…
Decoherence due to scattering from background gas particles is observed for the first time in a Mach-Zehnder atom interferometer, and compared with decoherence due to scattering photons. A single theory is shown to describe decoherence due…
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.…
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.…
We analyze the notion of quantum coherence in an interference experiment. We let the phase shifts fluctuate according to a given statistical distribution and introduce a decoherence parameter, defined in terms of a generalized visibility of…
We analyze quantum interference and decoherence effects in single-molecule junctions both experimentally and theoretically by means of the mechanically controlled break junction technique and density-functional theory. We consider the case…
The propagation of polarized photons in optical media can be effectively modeled by means of quantum dynamical semigroups. These generalized time evolutions consistently describe phenomena leading to loss of phase coherence and dissipation…
Recent progress in matter-wave interferometry aims to directly probe the quantum properties of matter on ever increasing scales. However, in order to perform interferometric experiments with massive mesoscopic objects, taking into account…
Usually, decoherence is generated from the coupling with an outer environment. However, a macroscopic object generically possesses its own environment in itself, namely the complicated dynamics of internal degrees of freedom. We address a…
We study diffraction and interference of indistinguishable particles. We consider some examples where the wavefunctions and detection probabilities can be evaluated in an analytical way. The diffraction pattern of a two-particle system…