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Modeling the decoherence of spacetime

John T. Whelan
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Abstract

The question of whether unobserved short-wavelength modes of the gravitational field can induce decoherence in the long-wavelength modes (``the decoherence of spacetime'') is addressed using a simplified model of perturbative general relativity, related to the Nordstrom-Einstein-Fokker theory, where the metric is assumed to be conformally flat. For some long-wavelength coarse grainings, the Feynman-Vernon influence phase is found to be effective at suppressing the off-diagonal elements of the decoherence functional. The requirement that the short-wavelength modes be in a sufficiently high-temperature state places limits on the applicability of this perturbative approach.

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John T. Whelan. 1998-05-07. Modeling the decoherence of spacetime. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.57.768

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