Decoherence and bare mass induced by nonconformal metric fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nonconformal stochastic metric fluctuations affect the Klein-Gordon field, leading to an effective mass and decoherence, with implications for understanding quantum field behavior in fluctuating spacetime.

Contribution

It introduces a model where stochastic metric fluctuations induce an effective mass and decoherence in the Klein-Gordon field, linking spacetime fluctuations to observable quantum effects.

Findings

Effective mass depends on metric fluctuations.

Metric fluctuations cause decoherence of the Klein-Gordon field.

Energy-momentum tensor inherits stochastic behavior.

Abstract

The effects, upon the Klein--Gordon field, of nonconformal stochastic metric fluctuations, are analyzed. It will be shown that these fluctuations allow us to consider an effective mass, i.e., the mass detected in a laboratory is not the parameter appearing in the Klein--Gordon equation, but a function of this parameter and of the fluctuations of the metric. In other words, in analogy to the case of a nonrelativistic electron in interaction with a quantized electromagnetic field, we may speak of a bare mass, where the observed mass shows a dependence upon the stochastic terms included in the metric. Afterwards, we prove, resorting to the influence functional, that the energy--momentum tensor of the Klein--Gordon field inherites this stochastic behavior, and that this feature provokes decoherence upon a particle immersed in the region where this tensor is present.