Decoherence of a composite particle induced by a weak quantized gravitational field

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a weak quantized gravitational field causes decoherence in a composite quantum particle, using the Feynman-Vernon influence functional to explore fundamental quantum-gravity interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of gravitationally induced decoherence for composite particles through the Feynman-Vernon approach, advancing understanding of quantum gravity effects.

Findings

Decoherence is significantly influenced by the quantum nature of the gravitational field.

Results shed light on gravitational time-dilation effects on quantum coherence.

Insights may inform experimental efforts to detect quantum gravitational phenomena.

Abstract

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 evidence pointing in the direction that we really need a quantum description of the gravitational field. In this scenario, several proposals for experimentally investigating quantum gravitational effects far from Plank scale have recently appear in literature, like gravitationally induced entanglement, for instance. An important issue of theses approaches is the decoherence introduced by the quantum nature not only of the system under consideration, but also from the gravitational field itself. Here, by means of the Feynman-Vernon influence functional we study the decoherence of a quantum system induced by the quantized gravitational field and by its own quantum nature. Our results may be important in providing a better understanding of many phenomena like the decoherence induced by the gravitational time-dilation, the quantum reference frames and the quantum equivalence principle.