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Measuring Decoherence due to Quantum Vacuum Fluctuations
Anirudh Gundhi1, Hendrik Ulbricht2
1Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, University of Trieste, Department of Physics, Strada Costiera 11, 34151 Trieste, Italy and , Trieste Section, Via Valerio 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy.
None:
The interaction of a particle with vacuum fluctuations-which theoretically exist even in the complete absence of matter-can lead to observable irreversible decoherence if it were possible to switch on and off the particle charge suddenly. We compute the leading order decoherence effect for such a scenario and propose an experimental setup for its detection. Such a measurement might provide further insights into the nature of vacuum fluctuations and a novel precision test for the decoherence theory.
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