We study quantum noise and decoherence induced by gravitons. We derive a Langevin equation of geodesic deviation in the presence of gravitons. The amplitude of noise correlations tells us that large squeezing is necessary to detect the noise. We also consider the decoherence of spatial superpositions of two massive particles caused by gravitons in the vacuum state and find that gravitons could give a relevant contribution to the decoherence. The decoherence induced by gravitons would offer new vistas to test quantum gravity in tabletop experiments.
We propose an experiment that the entanglement between two macroscopic mirrors suspended at the end of an equal-arm interferometer is destroyed by the noise of gravitons through bremsstrahlung. By calculating the correlation function of the noise, we obtain the decoherence time from the decoherence functional. We estimate that the decoherence time induced by the noise of gravitons in squeezed states stemming from inflation is approximately 20 seconds for 40 km long arms and 40 kg mirrors. Our analysis shows that observation of the decoherence time of quantum entanglement has the potential to d…
We discuss how a background bath of gravitons can induce decoherence of quantum systems. The mechanism is dephasing, the loss of phase coherence due to quantum geometry fluctuations caused by the gravitons. This effect is illustrated in a simple analog model of quantum particles in a cavity whose walls undergo position fluctuations, and create the same effect expected from spacetime geometry fluctuations. We obtain an explicit result for the decoherence rate in the limit where the graviton wavelength is large compared to the size of the quantum system, and make some estimates for this rate.
We study the effects of gravitationally-driven decoherence on tunneling processes associated with false vacuum decays, such as the Coleman--De~Luccia instanton. We compute the thermal graviton-induced decoherence rate for a wave function describing a perfect fluid of nonzero energy density in a finite region. When the effective cosmological constant is positive, the thermal graviton background sourced by a de Sitter horizon provides an unavoidable decoherence effect, which may have important consequences for tunneling processes in cosmological history. We discuss generalizations and consequenc…
In the framework of quantum field theory, a graviton interacts locally with a quantum state having definite mass, i.e. the gravitational mass eigenstate, while a weak boson interacts with a state having definite flavor, i.e. the flavor eigenstate. An interaction of a neutrino with an energetic graviton may trigger the collapse of the neutrino to a definite mass eigenstate with probability expressed in terms of PMNS mixing matrix elements. Thus, gravitons would induce quantum decoherence of a coherent neutrino flavor state similarly to how weak bosons induce quantum decoherence of a neutrino in…
In this work we consider the effects of gravitons and their fluctuations on the dynamics of two masses using the Feynman-Vernon influence functional formalism, applied to nonequilibrium quantum field theory and semiclassical stochastic gravity earlier by Calzetta, Hu and Verdaguer [1-3], and most recently, to this problem by Parikh, Wilczek and Zahariade [4-6]. The Hadamard function of the gravitons yields the noise kernel acting as a stochastic tensorial force in a Langevin equation governing the motion of the separation of the two masses. The fluctuations of the separation due to the gravito…
Gravitationally Induced Quantum Decoherence of Macroscopic Objects
The Hakubi Center for Advanced Research, Kyoto University（京都大学白川中心）；Department of Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学物理系）；Center for Gravitational Physics and Quantum Information, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学汤川理论物理研究所引力物理与量子信息中心）
Graviton emission decoheres superpositions of matter states. We write the decoherence rate in terms of a "differential Bondi news" function, and show that this function can be written as an overlap integral between different asymptotic radiative states given by Ashtekar. This result - while derived in the linearized theory - is ultimately expressed for asymptotically flat space-times in terms of variables with unambiguous geometric meaning in the full theory. We treat a simple two-path experiment, and compute the differential news, the purity, the entanglement entropy, and the fidelity, to mak…
We show that when the gravitational field is treated quantum-mechanically, it induces fluctuations -- noise -- in the lengths of the arms of gravitational wave detectors. The characteristics of the noise depend on the quantum state of the gravitational field, and can be calculated exactly in several interesting cases. For coherent states the noise is very small, but it can be greatly enhanced in thermal and (especially) squeezed states. Detection of this fundamental noise would constitute direct evidence for the quantization of gravity and the existence of gravitons.
We study the geodesic deviation equation for a quantum particle in a linearized quantum gravitational field. Particle's Heisenberg equations of motion are treated as stochastic equations with a quantum noise. We explore the stochastic equation beyond its local approximation as a differential. We discuss the squeezed states resulting from an inflationary evolution. We calculate the noise in the thermal and squeezed states.
Entanglement generation by Newtonian gravitational potential between objects has been widely discussed to reveal the quantum nature of gravity. In this paper, we perform a quantum field theoretical analysis of a slightly modified version of the gedanken experiment by Mari and co-workers. We show that decoherence due to the presence of a detector propagates with the speed of light in terms of a retarded Green's function, as it should be consistent with causality of relativistic field theories. The quantum nature of fields, such as quantum fluctuations or emission of gravitons expressed in terms…
We consider an equation of the geodesic deviation appearing in the problem of gravitational wave detection in an environment of gravitons. We investigate a state-dependent graviton noise (as discussed in a recent paper of Parikh,Wilczek and Zahariade) from the point of view of the Feynman integral and stochastic differential equations. The evolution of the density matrix and the transition probability in an environment of gravitons is obtained. We express the time evolution by a solution of a stochastic geodesic deviation equation with a noise dependent on the quantum state of the gravitationa…
We treat quantum creation of gravitons by small scale factor oscillations around the average of an expanding universe. Such oscillations can arise in standard general relativity due to oscillations of a homogeneous, minimally coupled scalar field. They can also arise in modified gravity theories with a term proportional to the square of the Ricci scalar in the gravitational action. The graviton wave equation is different in the two cases, leading to somewhat different creation rates. Both cases are treated using a perturbative method due to Birrell and Davies, involving an expansion in a confo…
We discuss information-theoretic properties of low-energy photons and gravitons in the S-matrix. Given an incoming n-particle momentum eigenstate, we demonstrate that unobserved soft photons decohere nearly all outgoing momentum superpositions of charged particles, while the universality of gravity implies that soft gravitons decohere nearly all outgoing momentum superpositions of all the hard particles. Using this decoherence, we compute the entanglement entropy of the soft bosons and show that it is infrared-finite when the leading divergences are re-summed a la Bloch and Nordsieck.
We analyse the triviality-quantum decoherence of Euclidean quantum chromodynamics in the gauge invariant sector in the presence of an external U(infinite)-flavor constant charged white noise reservoir and producing thus a proof for confinement in the Color-charge QCD through the modeling of the QCD vacuum by constant gauge fields
While the issues of dissipation, fluctuations, noise and decoherence in open quantum systems (with autocratic divide) analyzed via Langevin dynamics are familiar subjects, the treatment of corresponding issues in closed quantum systems is more subtle, as witnessed by Boltzmann's explanation of dissipation in a macroscopic system made up of many equal constituents (a democratic system). How to extract useful physical information about a closed democratic system with no obvious ways to distinguish one constituent from another, nor the existence of conservation laws governing certain special kind…
