Theory HEP Seminar

Horizons are Watching You

Gautam Satishchandran

Princeton

We show that if a massive (or charged) body is put in a quantum superposition of spatially separated states in the vicinity of any (Killing) horizon, the mere presence of the horizon will eventually destroy the coherence of the superposition. This occurs because, in effects, the long-range fields sourced by the superposition register on the horizon which forces the emission of entangling “soft gravitons/photons” through the horizon. This enables the horizon to harvest “which path” information about the superposition. The electromagnetic decoherence arises only when the superposed particle carries electric charge. However, since all matter sources gravity, the quantum gravitational decoherence applies to all superpositions. We provide estimates of the decoherence time for such quantum superpositions in the presence of a black hole, Rindler or cosmological horizon. Additionally, we show that this decoherence is distinct from – and larger than – the decoherence resulting from the presence of thermal radiation from the horizon (i.e. Hawking/Bunch-Davies/Unruh radiation). Finally, using techniques from quantum information theory, we show that this effect is equivalent to the decoherence due to any number of measurement apparatuses across the horizon which obtain “which path” information via the long-range field of the body. (Based on arXiv:2205.06279 and arXiv:2301.00026