Environmental gravitational decoherence and a tensor noise model

TL;DR

This paper investigates how gravitational waves and tensor noise can cause decoherence in massive quantum systems, analyzing the effects analytically and comparing them to existing models like Diosi and Penrose.

Contribution

It provides an analytical solution for the decoherence process due to gravitational waves and explores the role of tensor noise, linking it to established gravitational decoherence theories.

Findings

Gravitational wave emission leads to decoherence in massive systems.

A specific tensor noise model exhibits similarities to Diosi and Penrose's gravitational collapse mechanisms.

Analytical solutions clarify the impact of environmental gravitational decoherence.

Abstract

We discuss decrease of coherence in a massive system due to the emission of gravitational waves. In particular we investigate environmental gravitational decoherence in the context of an interference experiment. The time-evolution of the reduced density matrix is solved analytically using the path-integral formalism. Furthermore, we study the impact of a tensor noise onto the coherence properties of massive systems. We discuss that a particular choice of tensor noise shows similarities to a mechanism proposed by Diosi and Penrose.