Gravitational decoherence of photons

Abstract

Models of gravitational decoherence are not commonly applied to ultra-relativistic systems, including photons. As a result, few quantum optical tests of gravitational decoherence have been developed. In this paper, we generalize the gravitational decoherence model of Anastopoulos and Hu (arXiv:1305.5231) to photons. In this model, decoherence originates from a bath of stochastic gravitational perturbations, possibly of fundamental origin. We derive a master equation for general states of the electromagnetic (EM) field; the only free parameter is a noise temperature $\Theta$ of the gravitational fluctuations. We find that interference experiments with long baselines, accessible in near-future experiments, can, in principle, lead to strong constraints in $\Theta$.

24 pages, minor changes, references added, to be published in "Classical and Quantum Gravity"

References in corpus (7)

• The Rotating-Wave Approximation: Consistency and Applicability from an Open Quantum System Analysis
• Realistic clocks, universal decoherence and the black hole information paradox
• Quantum Connectivity of Space-Time and Gravitationally Induced Decorrelation of Entanglement
• Intrinsic and Fundamental Decoherence: Issues and Problems
• Entanglement decoherence in a gravitational well according to the event formalism
• Decoherence in Quantum Gravity: Issues and Critiques
• HYPER and gravitational decoherence

Cited by in corpus (1)

• How gravitational fluctuations degrade the high-dimensional spatial entanglement