Two-particle correlated interference in reflection: extending the quantum-classical boundary via a macroscopic quantum superposition insensitive to decoherence
Reflection of a microscopic particle from a mesoscopic/macroscopic `mirror' generates two-body correlated interference from the incident and reflected particle substates and their associated mirror substates. The microscopic momentum exchanged generates two mirror substates which interfere to produce fringes which do not vanish as the mirror mass increases. The small displacement between these mirror states can yield negligible environmental decoherence times. Mirror coherence lengths impose constraints on the extent of this interference, which are mitigated using interference of the two-body states associated with the particle reflecting from both of the two surfaces of a slab of matter in a manner analogous to the classical interference of a pulse of light reflecting from a `thin film'. This two-body correlated interference is modeled as a particle traversing a finite well with both the particle and well treated quantum mechanically. Such a treatment predicts the expected `thin-film' interference but only as a special case of a more general result. It is also shown that measurements on only the reflected particle (yielding a marginal probability density function) can act as a probe to reveal the quantum state of the macroscopic reflector. For equal masses, coherence of the particle substate is transferred to the mirror substate, a quantum manifestation of a familiar classical result.