Nonperturbative Danielson-Satishchandran-Wald Decoherence with Unruh-DeWitt detectors

Abstract

Recently, Danielson, Satishchandran, and Wald (DSW) have proposed a novel source of decoherence for uniformly accelerated charges and masses in spatial superposition in spacetimes containing a bifurcating Killing horizon. Such an effect can be traced back to the emission and absorption of soft photons and gravitons, which effectively act as "which-path'' information probes. This results in the decoherence of any such superposition in a finite proper time. With this in mind, we study the DSW mechanism using a gapless finite-time detector prepared in a spatial superposition of uniformly accelerated paths in Minkowski spacetime that interacts with a massive scalar field. The calculation is nonperturbative. Such a model will enable us to analyze the decoherence process in a more controlled manner, highlighting the main factors that give rise to this interesting mechanism.