Universal decoherence due to gravitational time dilation

Understand

The physics of low-energy quantum systems is usually studied without explicit consideration of the background spacetime.

• Phenomena inherent to quantum theory on curved space-time, such as Hawking radiation, are typically assumed to be only relevant at extreme physical conditions: at high energies and in strong gravitational fields.
• Here we consider low-energy quantum mechanics in the presence of gravitational time dilation and show that the latter leads to decoherence of quantum superpositions.
• Time dilation induces a universal coupling between internal degrees of freedom and the centre-of-mass of a composite particle.