Matter-wave coherence limit owing to cosmic gravitational wave background

Journal article

We study matter-wave interferometry in the presence of a stochastic background of gravitational waves. It is shown that if the background has a scale-invariant spectrum over a wide bandwidth (which is expected in a class of inflationary models of Big Bang cosmology), then separated-path interference cannot be observed for a lump of matter of size above a limit which is very insensitive to the strength and bandwidth of the fluctuations, unless the interferometer is servo-controlled or otherwise protected. For ordinary solid matter this limit is of order 1–10 mm. A servo-controlled or cross-correlated device would also exhibit limits to the observation of macroscopic interference, which we estimate for ordinary matter moving at speeds small compared to c.

Authors: Steane, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Physics Letters A
• Volume: 381
• Issue: 47
• Pages: 3905-3908
• Publication date: 2017-10-30
• Acceptance date: 2017-08-20
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physleta.2017.08.044
• EISSN: 1873-2429
• ISSN: 0375-9601
• Keywords: Decoherence; Gravitational wave; Cosmic inflation; Interferometry; Matter wave