Speaker
Mark Hertzberg
(Tufts Institute of Cosmology)
Description
Quantum mechanics allows for states in macroscopic superpositions, but they ordinarily undergo rapid decoherence due to interactions with their environment. A system that only interacts gravitationally, such as an arrangement of dark matter (DM), may exhibit slow decoherence. In this work, we compute the decoherence rate of a quantum object within general relativity; a robust and rigorous quantum general relativistic result. We present several applications, include galactic dark matter, superpositions of phase oscillations, Boson stars, etc. This is based on Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 031301 (2021), Phys. Rev. D 103, 104053 (2021), and JCAP 07 (2020) 056.
