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arXiv:gr-qc/0111105 · International Journal of Modern Physics A

DECOHERENCE AND GRAVITATIONAL BACKGROUDS

Serge Reynaud, Brahim Lamine, Astrid Lambrecht, Paulo A. Maia Neto, Marc-Thierry Jaekel

Published Mar 20, 2002• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the decoherence process associated with the scattering of stochastic gravitational waves. We discuss the case of macroscopic systems, such as the planetary motion of the Moon around the Earth, for which gravitational scattering is found to dominate decoherence though it has a negligible influence on damping. This contrast is due to the very high effective temperature of the background of gravitational waves in our galactic environment.

DOI
10.1142/s0217751x0201042x

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We study the decoherence process associated with the scattering of stochastic gravitational waves. We discuss the case of macroscopic systems, such as the planetary motion of the Moon around the Earth, for which gravitational scattering is found to dominate decoherence though it has a negligible influence on damping. This contrast is due to the very high effective temperature of the background of gravitational waves in our galactic environment.
The quite different behaviors exhibited by microscopic and macroscopic systems with respect to quantum interferences suggest the existence of a borderline beyond which quantum systems loose their coherences and can be described classically. Gravitational waves, generated within our galaxy or during the cosmic expansion, constitute a universal environment susceptible to lead to such a quantum decoherence mechanism. We assess this idea by studying the quantum decoherence due to gravitational waves on typical microscopic and macoscopic systems, namely an atom interferometer (HYPER) and the Earth-Moon system. We show that quantum interferences remain unaffected in the former case and that they disappear extremely rapidly in the latter case. We obtain the relevant parameters which, besides the ratio of the system's mass to Planck mass, characterize the loss of quantum coherences.
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The quite different behaviors exhibited by microscopic and macroscopic systems with respect to quantum interferences suggest that there may exist a naturally frontier between quantum and classical worlds. The value of the Planck mass (22μμμg) may lead to the idea of a connection between this borderline and intrinsic fluctuations of spacetime. We show that it is possible to obtain quantitative answers to these questions by studying the diffusion and decoherence mechanisms induced on quantum systems by gravitational waves generated at the galactic or cosmic scales. We prove that this universal fluctuating environment strongly affects quantum interferences on macroscopic systems, while leaving essentially untouched those on microscopic systems. We obtain the relevant parameters which, besides the ratio of the system's mass to Planck mass, characterize the diffusion constant and decoherence time. We discuss the feasibility of experiments aiming at observing these effects in the context of ongoing progress towards more and more sensitive matter-wave interferometry.
Stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves are intrinsic fluctuations of spacetime which lead to an unavoidable decoherence mechanism. This mechanism manifests itself as a degradation of the contrast of quantum interferences. It defines an ultimate decoherence border for matter-wave interferometry using larger and larger molecules. We give a quantitative characterization of this border in terms of figures involving the gravitational environment as well as the sensitivity of the interferometer to gravitational waves. The known level of gravitational noise determines the maximal size of the molecular probe for which interferences may remain observable. We discuss the relevance of this result in the context of ongoing progresses towards more and more sensitive matter-wave interferometry.