Master equation for systems interacting with linearized gravity

Abstract

We investigate the open quantum dynamics of a system of two masses interacting with an environment of linearized gravitational waves. We formulate the analysis in terms of the observable proper distance between the two masses, and show that the canonical variables obtained from the standard Lagrangian, expressed in terms of the Fermi normal coordinates, are not suitable for an effective description of the system. We resolve this issue through a unitary transformation that provides a physically meaningful system--environment decomposition and derive the master equation to leading order in $G$. Its dissipative sector reproduces the classical energy loss due to gravitational-wave emission, while the noisy contributions suppress coherences between states with different mass quadrupole, or effectively, different proper separations. In the regime where the proper distance can be described by considering small quantum fluctuations around an average distance $l_0$, the dynamics reduces to a Caldeira--Leggett-type equation, with a decoherence rate dependent on the baseline length $l_0$.