Decoherence due to the Casimir effect?

TL;DR

This paper clarifies that decoherence of an electron near conducting plates is not caused by vacuum fluctuations or the Casimir effect, but rather by sudden interaction switching and acceleration effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates that previous claims of decoherence from vacuum fluctuations are due to non-adiabatic switching and acceleration, refining the understanding of decoherence sources.

Findings

Decoherence is not caused by vacuum fluctuations alone.

Sudden switching and acceleration induce decoherence.

Vacuum fluctuations do not lead to decoherence in this setup.

Abstract

Open system dynamics of an electron is studied in the presence of radiation field, confined between two parallel conducting pates. It has been suggested in previous works that the quantized zero-point modes of this field lead to finite decoherence effects, possibly due to the Casimir force. However, in this work it is shown that the decoherence found in previous works is due to the sudden switching on of the system-environment interaction and due to the acceleration of the electron enforced by the background paths whose superposition was analyzed. The work discusses important theoretical aspects of the setup and shows that while coherence might be lost due to bremsstrahlung induced by an external or the image potential, it cannot be lost due to the mere presence of the quantum vacuum fluctuations between the plates.