Abstract

Some of the simplest modifications to general relativity involve the coupling of additional scalar fields to the scalar curvature. By making a Weyl rescaling of the metric, these theories can be mapped to Einstein gravity with the additional scalar fields instead being coupled universally to matter. The resulting couplings to matter give rise to scalar fifth forces, which can evade the stringent constraints from local tests of gravity by means of so-called screening mechanisms. In this talk, we derive evolution equations for the matrix elements of the reduced density operator of a toy matter sector by means of the Feynman-Vernon influence functional. In particular, we employ a novel approach akin to the LSZ reduction more familiar to scattering-matrix theory. The resulting equations allow the analysis, for instance, of decoherence induced in atom-interferometry experiments by these classes of modified theories of gravity.

Details

Title
Influence functionals, decoherence and conformally coupled scalars
Author
Burrage, C 1 ; Käding, C 1 ; Millington, P 1 ; Minář, J 2 

 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK 
 Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam; Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK; School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK; Centre for the Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of Quantum Non-Equilibrium Systems, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK 
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Sep 2019
Publisher
IOP Publishing
ISSN
17426588
e-ISSN
17426596
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2567740373
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.