Decoherence in matter-wave Talbot interference: a hydrodynamic probability-flow analysis

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how environmental decoherence suppresses matter-wave Talbot interference using a hydrodynamic probability-flow approach, revealing that interference visibility and flow channel organization can diminish at different rates.

Contribution

It introduces a hydrodynamic analysis of decoherence effects in matter-wave Talbot interference, providing a local perspective on coherence loss beyond traditional intensity measures.

Findings

Decoherence suppresses the Talbot carpet structure and smooths momentum distributions.

Flow channels can persist even when interference features are diminished.

Loss of interference visibility and flow organization can occur independently.

Abstract

We investigate the suppression of matter-wave Talbot interference under environmentally induced decoherence. The system is modeled as an atomic beam diffracted by a periodic grating, whose transverse dynamics is described within the paraxial approximation. Environmental coupling is introduced through an effective open-system model that exponentially damps spatial coherences between diffracted components, allowing a continuous interpolation between the coherent Talbot regime and the incoherent far-field diffraction limit. Besides the usual intensity and transverse-momentum distributions, we analyze the local probability flow associated with the diffracted matter wave. The corresponding Bohmian, or hydrodynamic, representation is used here as a diagnostic tool fully equivalent to the standard quantum description, with no additional assumptions beyond the probability current of the paraxial wave field. In the present Talbot geometry, this analysis shows how decoherence progressively suppresses the carpet structure and smooths the transverse-momentum distribution, while the flow may remain organized into channels determined by the grating periodicity. The results illustrate, in a periodic matter-wave Talbot geometry, that the loss of visible interference and the loss of dynamical pathway separation need not occur simultaneously. In particular, flux-channel structures can persist in parameter regimes where multi-slit interference features have already been strongly reduced. This distinction provides a local characterization of decoherence in matter-wave Talbot interferometry and complements previous trajectory-based analyses of coherence loss in simpler interference and confined geometries.