Spin decoherence caused by spacetime curvature.

Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, M. Mensky

Rolf Schumann

Igor Pikovski, Magdalena Zych, Fabio Costa +1 more

Hiroaki Terashima, Masahito Ueda

A mechanism of spin decoherence caused by spacetime curvature in general relativity is discussed. The spin state of a particle is shown to decohere only if the particle moves in a curved spacetime. In particular, when a particle is near the event horizon of a black hole, an extremely rapid spin decoherence occurs for an observer who is static in a Killing time, however slow the particle's motion.

Raghvendra Singh, Khanna, Kabir, Dawood Kothawala

There has been considerable interest over the past years in investigating the role of gravity in quantum phenomenon such as entanglement and decoherence. In particular, gravitational time dilation is believed to decohere superpositions of center of mass of composite quantum systems. Since true effects of gravity are encoded in the curvature of spacetime, the universality of such decoherence must be characterized through components of Riemann tensor $R_{abcd}$, with a clear separation from non-inertial kinematic effects. We obtain the reduced density matrix of a composite system in a generic curved spacetime and express the decoherence time scale explicitly in terms of curvature. The decoherence in an inertial frame is caused by tidal acceleration. We also analyze the effects of self-gravity and show that the coupling of gravitational interaction with external curvature can not be captured by the replacement $m \to m + H_{\rm int}/c^2$.

Yuri Bonder, Elias Okon, Daniel Sudarsky