Decoherence and fluctuations in quantum interference experiments

Abstract

We analyze the notion of quantum coherence in an interference experiment. We let the phase shifts fluctuate according to a given statistical distribution and introduce a decoherence parameter, defined in terms of a generalized visibility of the interference pattern. One might naively expect that a particle ensemble suffers a greater loss of quantum coherence by interacting with an increasingly randomized distribution of shifts. As we shall see, this is not always true.